The Cure: Classic or Dud?

Anything to add, Ned?

The idea is to encourage people to be forthright in their opinion but it's not a vote or anything. It's a catchier way of saying "what do you think of this band?"

Cheers!

(PS: Dud. A couple of the singles are nice musically, even very good, but they have Smith's horrible smeared moan over the top of them. He sounds like a fourteen-year-old with a splinter in his toe: there's something wheedling about his voice which makes me want to smack him and tell him to get a grip rather than empathise with him.)

Seriously.. though it seems the norm to slag 'em off these days, it's amazing just how much good stuff they have done. 'Boy's Don't Cry'/'3 Imaginary Boys' is a great debut, whichever version you have. Scratchy wired glum-pop. In fact it's all classic up to 'The Top', their first major clunker.

'Head on the Door' is great pop. 'Kiss Me X3' is also great pop ('Just Like Heaven'), except where they try too hard to make great pop and fail ('Hot, Hot, Hot'). 'Disintegration' is their last great album. But not pop. No problem.

My last encounter with The Cure was 'Wild Mood Swings'. I swung my copy back from whence it came - Record and Tape Exchange. Still, 'Galore' sums up the later years nicely.

Anyway I like old Bob, a pop man at heart even in his gloomiest moments.

Classic. And if you disagree with me I'll shove all twenty or so CDRs of rare and odd stuff I have of theirs down your throat and kill you. *proceeds to light candles to huge _Disintegration_ poster in room*

The Cure are a band who, like Depeche Mode and a number of others of that ilk, should have just hung it up on December 31, 1989. Their glory days were in the 1980s, Disintegration should have been their last album. It would have been a perfect ending. Instead, they chose to put out three subpar releases in the 1990s. While Bloodflowers was a definite improvement over Wild Mood Swings (did *anyone* like that album?) and Wish (which came out at the peak of my Cure fandom and still disappointed me), it still wasn't close to the material they released during the 1980s.

Yeah, some of their stuff is whiny and pretentious. But I think they manage to pull it off reasonably well, and I think the whininess and the pretentiousness will make them staples of every sad-sack high school kid for the next thirty years, whether they continue to release new albums or not. (And hopefully they won't, judging from the poor quality of their most recent albums--I think that the more bad stuff they release, the less "legendary" they'll become.)

By the way, I *was* a teenage goth girl. I was also an early-20s goth girl. I own a velvet and lace cape and little pointy boots and black lipstick. Heh.

_Wild Mood Swings_ is more problematic. It's a very erratic album and contains a couple of songs that never should have seen the light of day ("Mint Car", "Return"). However, it also contains the absolutely marvelous "The 13th", "Want", "Gone!" and "Jupiter Crash". Some judicious editing (and swapping some album tracks for b-sides) would make this a much better album.

For me, _Bloodflowers_ compares very well to their 80's output. It seems that the group got back into a good songwriting groove for this album, which is particularly evident on "Out Of This World", "The Loudest Sound", "The Last Day Of Summer", "Bloodflowers", and "Watching Me Fall" (Cure cliches and all). The album has a strong sense of flow and there are no embarrassing attempts to rewrite "Friday I'm In Love". It was a good ending for them, assuming that Robert's latest pronouncements about the band's demise are actually true this time.

There are individual songs I don't like, and _Wild Mood Swings_ is easily my least- favorite of their albums, but I'd be hard-pressed to say that I actively dislike any of the Cure's albums.

They have many good tunes. However, they have many bad ones, viz "Friday I'm In Love".

Still, at their best they show an impressive ability to make both poppy goth jumpathons and total doomfests.

I had a girlfriend once who was into these boys hard and she used to play is it 'Pictures of You' (?) over and over and over (a sort of pining for a lost love I think; not me, incidentally). Anyway, it used to bore the hell out of me, not to mention what felt like a large hole in my brain.

The thing is, with the Cure, it's like the Manic Street FUCKING Preachers syndrome - people who like 'em don't just like 'em, they fucking LOVE 'em, and think they're prophets or something. No, they are miserable, half-goths with absolutely nothing to say and even less charisma.

That said, I am admit that I am hardly familiar know their canon, since I can't bear exposure to it for protracated periods.

Still; DUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUDUD

Hmm, having said that, I do get riled when someone fails to 'get' my favourite bands and indulges in the kind of mindless attack I have already posted against The Cure. Yet, I feel that certain bands are wont to attract a more dependent following, who hang the band's music like metaphorical rosaries. And I'm not sure that even among my most beloved artists, there are those which I could hold in such equally mindless esteem.

What say you?

DUD

Yet I do wonder how much my own nosatlgia plays a role. I still think Wish is great, despite every. review. ever. written. Maybe if I hadn't listened to it for the 1st time as a teenager travelling thru Europe with schoomates I'd think differently.

Also, I really really like the Wolfgang Press song on _Lonely is an Eyesore_, but I've heard their recordings are pretty patchy. Any recommendations there?

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.

They were very fun at Roskilde, and it's remarkable how gracefully Robert Smith has aged. He looks like my grandma when she was in her eighties, and it looks as if he really leans into it, and it's really rock'n'roll. It's also nice that they didn't have a mediocre new album they had to promote, and the Cure sound is just made for festivals.

is anyone from this board going to the show this weekend? i'm still not sure if i'm going because of everything that is going on with my life. any of those issues don't seem to outweigh that one BIG positive one. The Cure are playing one date in the United States this year, outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, and it's in my back yard. how can i not go to this show?

I'll be there dogg

You have to go

i saw them a couple of weeks ago and it was SO great. they are currently a finely honed machine.

I’m going. It’ll be fun. My main Q as an outoftowner is if the public transportation options are actually going to be workable

that is a good question. i was looking at getting to Union Station and getting there that way. the problem is getting home as most things seem to stop at that time of night. so to get home, if i got there via Union Station, is Uber.

Hit with a lot of expenses this month, but we're going to try for last minute closeout deals on StubHub.

24 hours and counting down.

...still don't know if i'm going.

go! they're always great live.

Bee OK, you gotta go.

it's going to, eh, be ok!

i know i really do need to go and i haven't seen the Pixies since the last time they opened for the Cure at Dodger Stadium in 1989. there is just this thing called life that is getting in the way. i'm trying tho.

at least a few of my friends went. the one I talked to afterward is one of the most rabid Cure fans I've ever seen. She was miserable in the heat all day but said their set about made up for it (and then she met some of the band at the hotel later that night including Robert). But I'm glad I opted not to fly down for this

My sistrah went

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2019/brookside-park-pasadena-ca-639f6a7b.html

The Cure, as you can see, played 27 songs over two and a half hours at the Pasadena Daydream Festival. Pixies also got a full set with a 25 songs. the BIG deal with the Cure part is they played "Just One Kiss" live for the first time ever in the United States. i could only find a three song clip but holy fuck is this good1

"Just One Kiss" starts at the four minute mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28L4CnT2XAI

BTW, i got sick and didn't make the show. mad about that as i watched the whole thing on YouTube and it looked and sounded fantastic.

Hope you were able to sell your tickets!

Robert announces three new vaporware albums to put on your imaginary shelf alongside 4:14 Scream, 4:26 Dream, Reflections, Live In Paris, his 1990 solo album, his 2001 solo album, the Wish deluxe reissue...

The correct approach to this news.

that link, when clicked by me at this point in time, does nothing except load endlessly into nothing.

what's the news?

Robert Smith is leading an Antarctic expedition

nice; surely on the hunt to recapture some of that chilly goth atmosphere for the forthcoming dark album.

worth clicking again to see how Jason has somehow become the oldest member of The Cure

I’m seeing them in Mexico City tonight!

The weather had been all nice and sunny for the past 4 days and today it has been cold and cloudy with a little bit of rain. Feels like it was on purpose.

ahh man! definitely looking forward to your review if you feel so compelled.

Of course! Cure has a passionate fanbase in Mexico, I’m very excited to see them here.

Enjoy Moka! If their Glasto show is anything to go by, you'll have a splendid time.

Yeah that link doesn't work for me either. What is it?

he said that they're preparing three albums. I saw the headline on the book of faces. I take it with a grain of salt.

ahh.

nme coverage.

yeah none of that sounds very promising at all, honestly.

hope i'm wrong and something new comes out and it's actually decent. but uhh. . . probably not.

Here's a Cure album that never was: my take on what sounds like a could-have-been, maybe was-going-to-be album circa 'Wild Mood Swings' but that focused in the aesthetic and mood with the through-line of string arrangements. Made from a few tracks from WMS and contemporaneous b-sides: 'This Is A Lie':

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGZch5NXkAAbgSb?format=jpg&name=large

https://www.mediafire.com/download/8f97pneclpg72ut

The Cure - 'This Is A Lie' (1996)
[The Wild Mood Swings Era Reconsidered]

01 - Adonais
02 - Jupiter Crash*
03 - A Pink Dream
04 - Treasure*
05 - Home
06 - Waiting
07 - Dredd Song
08 - It Used to Be Me
09 - Numb*
10 - Ocean
11 - Bare*
12 - This Is A Lie (Ambient Mix)

Total Time: 53:43

* From 'Wild Mood Swings'

Get rid of Dredd Song and that would be 100% fire

Ok, they are incredibly tight live. It feels like listening to the actual album, some songs even sound better than the studio version.

I might be biased because they are two of my favorite Cure songs but “A Forest” and “Close to Me” were great and the band seemed specially lively playing those. Simon even did a small cumbia bass coda at the end of the former following the claps of the audience and Robert was doing some sort of dance and smiling throughout the later. Lovesong was also great and an early highlight in the setlist, they also seemed to be having fun playing Lovecats.

The only song in the whole setlist that they seemed miserable playing was Friday I’m In Love. I thought Just Like Heaven would also sound exhausted but they sounded very at ease with that one.

The second encore was filled with early songs that hadn’t been played in the American festivals they did beforehand this year: Three Imaginary Boys, Grinding Halt, 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing an Arab, Jumping Someone Else’s Train were all played at the end.

wild mood swings era without 'want' is a bold, wrong move

I was focused on the string arrangement common thread, when I culled the selections for 'This Is A Lie'. If the synth strings in "Want" were real strings, I'd probably slot it in in lieu of "Dredd Song".

I really think the band could have been thinking of an album like this collection--so many of the tracks even have segue sections that help the tracks flow pretty seamlessly. An odd thing to bother with, for a b-side...

ahh man moka, you got 'lovecats'!!! sounds like a great night. would love to see them do 'gridning halt' as well. that song is so enduring and catchy!

if i ever see them i demand an hour-long 'watching me fall' followed by 'give me it' and then the curtain falls to booing

if i ever see them i demand an hour-long 'watching me fall' followed by 'give me it' and then the curtain falls to booing

would attend this.

Aw, they didn't play Lovecats when I saw them :(

It was its tour debut last night iirc.

Here’s the full setlist they played for almost 3 hours:

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-cure/2019/foro-sol-mexico-city-mexico-339c4c8d.html

wow, that's a really varied setlist. must have been a total blast.

if i ever see them i demand an hour-long 'watching me fall' followed by 'give me it' and then the curtain falls to booing

RS would never concede to a set this short, they'll only compromise to cut down to two hours for festivals

that is an insane setlist. you must have had a blast Moka!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B3i4ttvHocN/?igshid=12oxiuwbhn496

guys if fucking simon gallup dies, it will seriously be terrible.

i hope i'm reading too deeply into this and he's just fine.

V good new interview tied in with the release of the Anniversary/Cureation sets; it's the second part of a longer interview Kory Grow did with him a few months back:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/cure-band-robert-smith-interview-40-live-893005/amp/

Also should you be so inclined one of my projects on my Patreon is an album by album series Robert and company -- won't be monthly, maybe every other month or so. First one went live earlier in the week:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/cure-reflections-30754630

You’ve never been very political. Roger Waters, who played the day before you in Hyde Park, had a lot of anti-Trump messaging. Do you feel artists should be more political nowadays?
I don’t think there’s a rule. Some artists are very good at it. It requires a number of different things. One is the music that you make has to reinforce where you’re going with what you’re saying. And from a young age, I’ve always held what could be considered a socialist viewpoint on the world. That’s why I wail against inequality. What’s wrong with the world is essentially inequality. But it isn’t reflected in what I want the Cure to be. I wanted the Cure to be something that I could escape into. For me, it was an escape from the world. Like when I was doing the “Love Cats” video, and I’m there caressing kittens, I can’t turn around and say, “By the way, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the world.” It’s beyond absurd. Although now cuddling kittens would probably be a political statement in the state we’re in.

But you are political.
Behind the scenes, the Cure has always been politically active but usually pretty anonymously. It suits the way the band works, and everyone is much more comfortable with that rather than me being overt. They despair sometimes when I’ve had a few beers and I’ve done shows and I start spouting off. They’re like, “Please, don’t start.” Because once I start, it’s very hard to stop. I think it’s a great thing to be able to get up in front of people and convince people of what’s right and what’s wrong, although that depends on who you think is right and who is wrong.

I legit cheered when I read this. (Also this bolsters my argument for why "Us or Them" is so terrible; Robert is not good at putting explicit political expression into songs, not in the way he is at doing relationship imagery and emotional states.)

Definitely the most clear I think I've read on him on these points. Sign of a good interviewer at work too (though for years I've always felt people could be clearer in questions about the difference between being political and being politicized, but that's another subject).