The Cure: Classic or Dud?

the vinyl tracklisting of the s/t album is the way to go for that, all the songs left off the us cd are better than almost anything else on the album

4:13 dream isn't an album I enjoy much, partly because the opening track is so awesome....certainly my favorite Cure song post-Wish (I think it's an old track?), and the rest of the album is completely weak or terrible in comparison to it.

the post-80s albums got a pasting in the Cure poll but do fans round here still wave a flag for them? is one revered above the others?
i haven't liked a Cure song since Wish.

I don't think anyone here loves any full album but there are highlights here and there. s/t is probably the best of the lot.

"the loudest sound" off bloodflowers is prob still my favorite ever cure song

Smith looks as if he's on the verge of tearing up at it during the performance on Trilogy. I've always been fond of that one - great lyric!

Basically, when it comes to those post-Wish records there's songs on all of those albums I really, really like, even love. It's just that as albums they're either more filler heavy (Wild Mood Swings) or feature production that doesn't serve the songs well (4:13 Dream) ... Bloodflowers is a strange one in that its sustained mood, which worked so well on Pornography or Disintegration, is ultimately what tanks it.

I don't think anyone here loves any full album but there are highlights here and there. s/t is probably the best of the lot.

uh hi I still post here

Bloodflowers is by far my favorite of the four. I agree the sustained mood weighs it down a bit. Some songs like "Watching Me Fall", "Maybe Someday" and "39" would be better if they were a bit sped up.

The last two records have some good songs on them but the vocals are so loud they are tiring and the production makes them almost unlistenable.

Dan which full album out of this set do you love? really? any of them? all the way through?

watching me fall and 39 are perfect

the only song i think kinda sucks on bloodflowers is "where the birds always sing." otherwise i 100 percent love that record

I think I remember reading around the time that Bloodflowers was released that Robert deliberately limited himself to the same set of keys and consciously kept everything strictly within a limited tempo range. Maybe that wasn't the best idea, because while most of Bloodflowers sounds great in isolation, as an album it's a bit of a slog to get through.

"out of this world" i think singlehandedly made me a cure fan. it moves very subtly. great lyrics too

Oh god, Brad OTM. 'Where The Birds Always Sing' my least favourite song on there by miles, although I've never been fond of '39' either. I love the rest of the songs on it.

I would prefer if they had a bit more drive like "One Hundred Years" or "Disintegration". (x-post to imago)

I think "Where The Birds Always Sing" is brilliant musically.

I'm a bit late on this but I'd also like to stand up for Wish. Open is probably in my top three Cure songs (with A Night Like This and All Cats Are Grey). High is a fantastic single that was sadly overshadowed by Friday I'm In Love. Apart is absolutely devastating. One of their most heartbreaking songs. To Wish Impossible Things is a really underrated song too. Those strings that come in are so beautiful. Doing The Unstuck and A Letter To Elise are great songs too. Wendy Time is the only one I've never really clicked with.

Out of their last four albums, Bloodflowers is my favourite by a long way. Watching Me Fall is hard work but the rest of it is solid. Out Of This World and The Last Day Of Summer are really gorgeous. I liked the other three when I got them but could only pick a few songs from each that I really love these days (The End Of The World, Mint Car, Before Three, The Only One, I Don't Know What's Going On, Underneath The Stars). Not sure how I'd feel about a new Cure album at this stage.

what is this nonsense about 'watching me fall' being some sort of ordeal

it is the greatest most overblown meta-tantrum robert smith ever committed to tape. it is some sort of mope-rock pinnacle and the longer it goes on, the more it repeats, the greater it gets

Do people rate Cut Here from the greatest hits? I'm tempted to say it's my favourite Cure song since Wish. It's always made me a bit teary being about Billy Mackenzie.

oh wow yeah i completely forgot about "cut here" but i love that song

"The Last Day of Summer" is fantastic.

Yeah, I like 'Cut Here' a lot!

I was just reading about Cut Here on Wikipedia. Feeling pretty stupid that I've never realised that the title is an anagram of The Cure.

The very best thing about that Greatest Hits was the brief return of Boris on the acoustic disc.

I think 'Wrong Number' is incredibly underrated too, I probably like that more than anything on Wild Mood Swings

'Cut Here' rules. The remix on the single is even better.

On the Cut Here single, the formatted the song title such that "t He" were one color and "Cu…re" were another so the anagram was really obvious.

Re: recent albums I love; there are at least a couple of songs on each that I dislike or feel fine skipping but this is also true of (for example) The Head on the Door and I would say I love that album, too; I don't think you have to love every single song on an album to say you love it. So, I would say that I love every album they released except Wild Mood Swings, and even with WMS I love most of the b-sides.

Here's the remix of 'Cut Here':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_GgwQ6yW7c

And the b-side, 'Signal to Noise,' is another great later era Cure winner if you ask me.

Relistening to the 'Wrong Number' single, these remixes are really goofy.

Lime Green & Tangerine is great

Yeah 'Signal To Noise' and 'Cut Here' are really good.

Listening to the Acoustic Hits disc and Boris plays fuckin' tablas on 'High.' Hero.

i have been re-listening to almost every album, getting ready for Sunday's show. today i listened to The Top. i know this has been discussed before but wondering how that isn't considered one of The Cure's best albums. i kept waiting for a bad song to come up and it never did. it was them at their most psychedelic. sort of wish they did a few more albums like it.

It was a heavily drug-influenced album. I think part of the reason it's seen as a lesser effort is because it's the album without Simon and it came directly after such a poppy period ('Let's Go to Bed', 'The Walk', 'Lovecats', etc.).

The demos and related material on the deluxe edition are completely great, though.

And, let's not forget, its tour birthed Concert — arguably their best live album, even without Simon.

that's right, i forgot about Concert. i played that to death and had the cassette version that included a whole bunch of extra songs.

The version of "One Hundred Years" on that is just incredible, cranked up loud, that shrieking twin-guitar chaos at the end. I can feel adrenaline washing out of me when it shudders to a halt.

Mind you the version on Trilogy is pretty much as good.

no wonder i liked it so much:

the second side of the cassette and it's called Curiosity (Killing the Cat):

"Heroin Face" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Three Imaginary Boys)
"Boys Don't Cry" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Three Imaginary Boys)
"Subway Song" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Three Imaginary Boys)
"At Night" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Seventeen Seconds)
"In Your House" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Seventeen Seconds)
"The Drowning Man" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Faith)
"Other Voices" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Faith)
"The Funeral Party" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Faith)
"All Mine" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered Pornography)
"Forever (Version)" (now found on Disc Two of the remastered The Top)

Made a Curiosity playlist from the deluxe editions, the Seventeen Seconds live tracks are equal to the studio versions for me. There are a couple of really nice Dutch / German radio broadcast recordings from that 1980 tour which are pretty much my favourite Cure. Also worth tracking down is the video from a TV broadcast of a show in Glasgow on the 1984 tour, a few nights after the Concert recordings.

I have to say I expected this tour to have some sweet setlists but... damn, I did not expect them to be so diverse and unpredicatble - seems they could play anything from their entire catalogue at this point. Kinda reinforces my suspicion that this could be their real farewell tour.

I love The Top! At various points I would've said it's my favourite Cure record.

Kinda reinforces my suspicion that this could be their real farewell tour.

I'm surprised they're doing such a massive tour without a new album. I still haven't given up hope of an unexpected release at some point, there's been vague hints/rumours about them in the studio over the last year or two.

The Top was the first Cure album I ever owned so it's really cemented in my mind as one of their best records. But it had a weird history in the US; only available on CD as an import for a long time, not many hit singles, etc, so I think many people in the 80's missed it. Their loss.

The Top is a great album but I tend to underrate it because of how much "Birdmad Girl" sometimes gets on my nerves.

(more specifically, the chorus to "Birdmad Girl")

weirdly that is the only song on the album i can't bring to mind immediately

like, i try to, and it's 'dressing up'

Does this help:

Oh I could be......... A POLARR BEEEEEEEEAH

hahaha

like a polar beh. euh.

It's imPOSSIBALL

I think "Birdmad Girl" would sound good in the hands of Ric Ocasek

i like that chorus