The Cure: Classic or Dud?

Yeah, they've pretty well spent this century working on becoming a great goddamn live band through and through, with one standout album in Playing and good albums in general otherwise. I get a sense Dave really takes his second chance at life very seriously but also from I can tell exuberantly, and the fact he seems to have gotten better as a singer/performer is helping as Martin's voice, originally a key saving grace when Dave ran himself too ragged, is starting to audibly give ground. Handy, really.

But to turn back to the subject at hand -- Robert and the band, in whatever formation, seem to just keep on keeping on. That Lollapalooza live set last year was A+.

Jesus H, this setlist!

Shake Dog Shake
Kyoto Song (First time since 2008)
A Night Like This
alt.end
Wailing Wall (First time since 1984)
Bananafishbones
The Caterpillar
The Walk
A Man Inside My Mouth (Live debut)
Close to Me
Lullaby
High
Birdmad Girl
Just Like Heaven
Pictures of You
Before Three
Lovesong
Like Cockatoos (First time since 2004)
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Want
The Hungry Ghost
One Hundred Years
Give Me It

Encore:
The Empty World (First time since 1984)
Charlotte Sometimes
Primary
The Top

Encore 2:
Dressing Up
Piggy in the Mirror (First time since 1997)
Never Enough
Wrong Number

Encore 3:
Three Imaginary Boys
M
Play for Today
A Forest

Encore 4:
The Lovecats
Let’s Go to Bed
Why Can’t I Be You?
Boys Don’t Cry
Hey You! (First time since 2004)

A Man Inside My Mouth (Live debut)

wau

oh man

Everything about that set list is great.

is Lol back?? seems weird doing the Lol n Bob album without him.

The Top is pretty much Robert solo, he wrote and played everything exept for the drumms.

"Wailing Wall" !!

So it looks like 4:14 Scream hasn't appeared yet!

Knew those shows would be great. Gutted...

I'm looking for the 3-bluray box already. They ARE recording this, right?

whoa.

"Wailing Wall" !!

i would have loved to have been at that show, wow what a set-list!

The only album that doesn't seem to be represented is Bloodflowers

I do like how "The Hungry Ghost" seems to be becoming a standard choice for them.

Always thought that The Hungry Ghost sounded like it should've been on the Head on the Door. It would've fitted in well.

London gigs up on d1m3 now

Not a member. Will this trickle down to other places?

"So it looks like 4:14 Scream hasn't appeared yet!"

I'm happy not hearing anything new from them frankly.

Grinch

Yeah despite all the disillusions I will never not be excited about prospects of new Cure music

"Hungry Ghost" was a good one and I thought the last album was generally fun, so I'm looking forward to the next album.

I think Smith said he wasn't that bothered about creating new music, so I doubt there will be much more.

So I was watching this documentary on YouTube, and it was interviews with British Cure fans talking about why the Cure are so "important", "influential", etc. I think that to their millions of fans they are canonical, but there just seems to be something about them that irks rock canon types. Part of me thinks perhaps it is their diverse fan base and the way they reached American suburbia in a way that "important" groups didn't. And what is so WRONG about suburban mopey kids anyway? There will always be that personality that will never be accepted by cynical critic types. But why is cynicism / drug addiction / urban street cred so necessary to be regarded as "important"? Are music critics really fantasists, and being a suburban fanboy or fangirl just not part of that?

Any thoughts / writings on this would be appreciated.

there just seems to be something about them that irks rock canon types

The lipstick.

It is weird that so many bands that were dismissed by the hetero macho rock crew back in the day have been completely embraced, but not the Cure. It's kind of a cool thing about them that they remain so divisive even as they are becoming the Grateful Dead of their era.

I like it when grandmothers drop the Cure's name or when I hear them at the drug store.

At 2x speed, this reads like affectionate parody. Live the dancing:

http://youtu.be/v4osvtUlrEc

Anyone see this silhouette and think robert smith looked like some weird monster with an elephant dicknose?

http://www.8ball.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/700x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/T/h/The_cure_-_robert_silhouette_-_wht_girls_cu.jpg

Still not sure exactly what's going on with his hands here. They look so weird an big.

I always liked that photo in the earlier versions.

Yeah, this is a newer version. I couldn't dig up any old versions (didn't look all that hard though). Had it in much more sharp contrast on a yellow bumpersticker when I was a kid.

http://www.thecure.com/discography/1289/boys_dont_cry_(new_voice_new_mix)
http://www.thecure.com/discography/1307/join_the_dots:_b-sides_and_rarities_1978-2001

Oh, it was a single sleeve? Mine looked more like this:

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/12/121633/1685202-l_575b2bfdbd899a9e25e9943569727f5c.gif

Was just wondering: when the Cure debuted, were they compared to anyone in particular? There's something weirdly insular and sui generis about the band, and that's sort of true for all its eras. Especially the pop era, maybe. Something like "In Between Days," or "Just Like Heaven," they're instantly familiar yer kind of rootless in a way. No one would hear those songs and say, "hey, that sounds a lot like ..." Or would they?

I suspect they got a fair amount of initial Jam comparisons given the Chris Parry association, but also the tight three-piece arrangements etc.

Maybe really early on, but that seems an outlier, doesn't it? Because of all the things the Cure doesn't resemble, its the Jam.

The Trouser Press Record Guide said that "Inbetween Days" sounded "exactly like New Order", which doesn't seem that far wrong.

I suspect that they were seen as just another post-punk band at the beginning, really... progressing from that to being accused of ripping of Joy Division/New Order and Siouxsie & The Banshees.

In 10 Imaginary Years, Chris Parry even says he was initially trying to duplicate his success with the Jam by finding a group that sounded like the Jam. Those early demos (disc two of Three Imaginary Boys deluxe edition) seem to indicate that this was true.

I think I heard they were described as a Southern Buzzcocks in the music press in their early days. They were certainly quite punky then but even then they seemed a bit out of sync with the rest.

I still chuckle about the fact that The Cure were originally signed to Hansa... they were part of the same competition that Japan entered to get a record deal. The Cure won, but Hansa signed Japan anyway. The Cure, of course, left for Fiction without releasing anything on Hansa, and Japan managed three albums before ending up on Virgin.

Didn't they get weird comparisons to Pink Floyd circa 17 Seconds?

https://youtu.be/MDXAIerOQSk?t=1m38s

I remember seeing a review for the remaster/deluxe edition of Seventeen Seconds that called it "Pink Floyd for stoners that didn't have anyone to smoke with."

he has the exact air of Ronnie O'Sullivan in that interview :D

Gah, no, I don't hear the Jam in them at all. Joy Division is a better comparison for early to mid-career Cure, due to the relative foregrounding of the guitar. Even at their synthiest (e.g., "Prayers for Rain") they didn't sound all that New Orderish. I agree with Josh that they mostly sounded like themselves. The poppier Cure records with horns (e.g., "Close to Me") sounded like nothing else at the time.

I grant that something like "The Walk" may have a vibe in common with pop songs by other bands that incorporated keyboards into a basic rock-band framework, but in my mind many of those songs postdate similar Cure tyoons or simply share precursors.

Maybe the sound of "Just Like Heaven" or "Letter to Elise" doesn't sound that far off from the Church or the Furs or Roxette or Dead or Alive or EMF or whatever. But none of those bands could also have coughed up anything like "Carnage Visors."

Pornography is one of the most singular records any band has ever made or will ever make

Pornography is just Joy Division's 'Atrocity Exhibition' stretched out over an entire album, but recorded with all the levels in the red and with a superior singer. Still a good record, though.

I think a lot of people are missing the original question -- not what happened a little bit later, but at the start, when they 'debuted.' Bringing in later work is an irrelevancy. To quote Austin earlier:

In 10 Imaginary Years, Chris Parry even says he was initially trying to duplicate his success with the Jam by finding a group that sounded like the Jam. Those early demos (disc two of Three Imaginary Boys deluxe edition) seem to indicate that this was true.

No, it's not the only thing, obviously. But it's a clear ghost hanging over the era, and Parry was extremely well known/influential in music industry circles, the Jam connection was incredibly clear to make when he started up Fiction. Imagine if the band had done nothing more BUT that if that'll help.

It's hard to say what kind of profile The Cure would have had if they'd done the first album and only the first album, and then split up... for all we know they could have just ended up being a post-punk era curio or, I dunno, at least a band with the profile of The Comsat Angels or something.

The Trouser Press Record Guide said that "Inbetween Days" sounded "exactly like New Order", which doesn't seem that far wrong.

yeah, the first time i heard it on the radio i really think it was a new order song until the vocals came in. i don't think that was an uncommon reaction tbh, bearing in mind that it came out just a few months after 'low-life'

Even with the Parry connection, it's very difficult for me to link The Cure with The Jam musically... in my mind, I tend to link very early Cure with yer PiL's, Magazine's and early XTC's, which they shared some elements with without wholly sounding like them. The scratchy guitar particularly.