The Cure: Classic or Dud?

the "cure=suburbia" part of Michael Bracewell's England Is Mine is one of the best things ever!

Classic, BTW. Again, my mid-teens coincided with Disintegration and I was full-on obsessed for a couple of years. I bought a shedload of albums at Oxfam last year, and a friend and I drove our GF/wives insane by listening, back to back, to 17 Seconds, Faith, Pornography and the Top. Divorce was on the horizon by the end of that evening.

Thing is, there are SO many B-sides and rarities which have officially surfaced that they'd have to put out a box set. As it is, if the remasters that are surfacing next year are going to include bonus discs for each with room for other oddities, then that will partially settle the problem.

Shake Dog Shake
Fascination Street
A Strange Day
A Night Like This
Lovesong
Push
Sinking
Pictures Of You
Lullaby
Lovecats
Maybe Someday
In Your House
From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea
M
Charlotte Sometimes
Inbetween Days
Just Like Heaven
Hey You!!!
Play For Today
A Forest

Fire In Cairo (as a 3 piece)
Grinding Halt (as a 3 piece)
10.15 Saturday Night
Boys Don't Cry
I Dig You (with Porl Thompson and Frank The Postman)
I'm A Cult Hero (with Porl Thompson and Frank The Postman),
Close To Me
Let's Go To Bed
Why Can't I Be You
Friday I'm In Love

Fucking hell, just reading that through sends me into space. I'm still shellshocked.

Genius.

!!!!!!

And yes, Frank the postman showed up in all his voluminous glory, the first time they've done any Cult Hero material in (10 years according to Robert).

And was not Charlie saying some months back about how the band has fallen off recently? UNDESERVING INFIDEL! But I will not bear a grudge. Yet.

And I maintain my viewpoint, no doubt. Friday's only iffy moment came 11 songs in, when some (relatively) unfamiliar chords struck up - "What is this," I thought to myself with a grimace, "Joan Osborne's 'One Of Us'?" But no, it was in fact "Maybe Someday".

The Cure should've stopped recording new music after Wish (or more specifically, if you like, after "Fear Of Ghosts"). I love them still, but I shall not be moved on this matter.

Porl, remarkably, is now jobbing as the band's guitar tech!

Wait, what? So essentially he and Perry B. have completed the circle.

Anyway. First batch of reissues in a month. EXCITED!

I am naturally using all my spider-senses to procure a mixing desk feed of the show. I'll be absolutely amazed if nobody recorded it, but nothing yet. Ned, you will be the f...oooh, among the first to know when I find it!

That I had heard, seems to make sense! They and Depeche should just finally tour together. ;-)

In all seriousness, thanks for any leads you might have!

Actually I think Dan was born in 1974 and he went through all that shift you did except he kept loving the Cure as well. Rah!

But for many of us born in or around 1974, this issue is fairly cut and dried. For a decade, The Cure made (mostly) great, emotive music to match the self-indulgent drama of teen angst. I too, found romance with a girl because of it. She was into Sylvia Plath 'n shit and thought Robert Smith was really good at painting with words in his lyrics. I felt the same. Even his terrible voice was welcomed as a strike for the blemished and the meek (read 'indie') against mainstream, hard-rock masculinity (what we call 'bogans' in Australia).

Then, as Paul and others have pointed out, we came of legal age in the early 90's and were lucky enough to be doing so right when music got a huge shot in the arm - with much better drugs and, yes, prettier girls. How convenient it was to feel disillusioned with "Wish" and all Cure work since. But my best efforts at objectivity still tell me, as they do to so many others, that The Cure are 80's classics and 90's duds. You can neatly bookend the best of this band up to and including "Disintegration".

Dublin, Friday: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2026/marlay-park-dublin-ireland-3411567.html

Tonight: Belfast, Belsonic Festival. No livestream, but BBC radio Ulster is broadcasting the whole set. Tough luck for us foreigners, I guess? Can't find anything BBC radio-related that works online anymore.

i would be pretty sad if i went to one of these shows and didn’t get anything from the new LP

Two songs from WMS, zero songs from Faith or Pornography

That would not be my choice but it’s not my band

They have 55 songs in rotation for this tour and are playing fewer than 30 a night, some of their albums are going to shift representation from day to day

and they’re playing festivals in about 26 countries and outdoor summer headliners in four, all of which they already played on the album’s tour* — it’ll be a very small proportion of the audience disappointed if they happen to be on a night that misses songs from any given LP. They played five songs from Lost World last time in Dublin!

*although three nights in Berlin this year vs seven cities last time, I’m sure a few people who travel to see 26 songs on the first night will be grumpy about missing some of the 29 songs played on the last night, which got added after they booked their train ticket. still a minority of the crowd would be safe bet.

lol I just checked the setlist for the first time since the album came out, and the show I got a ticket for same-day had five Lost World songs, one from the unreleased 4:14 Dream, and one they played four times that week and never again. So I saw two fewer songs from Lost World than I thought… Hope this tale of missing out helps emsworth empathetically feel better.

Cold! Never Enough! the two lost world songs, too!

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2026/ormeau-park-belfast-northern-ireland-13411565.html