what Cure album should I get next?

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17 Seconds/Faith/Pornography are totally the holy trinity and every Cure fan must own & treasure them. Pornography is my favorite Cure album but is sometimes hard to listen to because of its violent despair. So yes, Pornography, yes, get a better copy of Disintegration (you lose all the high-end on a worn tape and the high-end on Disintegration is particularly lovely--Plainsong!) And no-one's mentioned Bloodflowers yet! Surprisingly good I thought, and would sum it up as Pornography + Disintegration with a dash of Wish. Some of the songs were overlong, but I'm very forgiving. KMKMKM is loaded with filler but ultimately worth it. I ended up making two separate mix tapes of KMKMKM because I thought the song order was awful.

Great drug summary, Chris. It all makes so much more sense now vs. when I was a straightedge teen.

― teeny (teeny), Thursday, 29 August 2002 11:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

KMKMKM is loaded with filler but ultimately worth it. I ended up making two separate mix tapes of KMKMKM because I thought the song order was awful.

Wow -- I have to heavily disagree, I wouldn't change one damn thing about that album. It and Disintergration are radically different (in Cure terms) in approach, style, etc. but both are so perfectly sequenced that imagining them any other way is impossible for em.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 29 August 2002 13:22 (twenty-one years ago) link

I always thought KMKMKM was two separate albums fighting it out for supremacy, with neither particularly winning. There's a lot of great pop material on that one, like "Catch" and "Just Like Heaven", but every time it gets going there's something to derail it, like "The Snake Pit", "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep", etc. (And the other way is true...the album build up a glorious sense of brooding and misery with stuff like "The Kiss", but then it's derailed by lighter stuff like "Catch".) Then there's some stuff which just doesn't stand up and should have...and I'm saying this as a longtime and fairly serious Cure fan...should have been just plain cut, like "Torture". And the more I listen to "How Beautiful You Are", the less profound it seems to me than it did when I first heard it.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 29 August 2002 13:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

By the way, that's a challenge to you, Ned: I'd be interested to find out why you think KMKMKM is "perfectly sequenced" when almost everyone else I know think it's a real hodge-podge.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 29 August 2002 15:14 (twenty-one years ago) link

But it's that supposedly schizophrenic arrangement that makes it, see -- it's easy to see the album that way (and hell, maybe it was arranged without much forethought!), but to me it really feels of a piece. "The Kiss" is the perfect album starter, but "Catch" is the beautifully swoony bit right after it, yet it's not that different in mood. Everything just seems to follow logically after it, for all the seeming twists and turns -- it's hard for me to spell it out, but I sense a cohesiveness that Wild Mood Swings lacks.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 29 August 2002 15:27 (twenty-one years ago) link

I always think of _KMKMKM_ in terms of the double album release. The sequencing of side 1 ("The Kiss", "Catch", "Torture", "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep") and side 3 ("Just Like Heaven", "All I Want", "Hot Hot Hot!!!", "One More Time", "Like Cockatoos") are sheer perfection. Side 2 ("Why Can't I Be You???", "How Beautiful You Are...", "The Snakepit", "Hey You!!!") is very, very good. Side 4 ("Icing Sugar", "The Perfect Girl", "A Thousand Hours", "Shiver And Shake", "Fight") is a total mess and should never be played straight through.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:06 (twenty-one years ago) link

You really think that about the end of the album, Dan? If I had to pick another perfect moment, it would be how "Shiver and Shake" just ends and then "Fight" kicks in after a pause.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

I am totally listening to every album as soon as I get home. Thanks, ILM.

― teeny (teeny), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:27 (twenty-one years ago) link

Dan's probably right about the album making more sense in side-length nuggets. I suppose I just find it a bit jarring when I listen to it all the way through on a single CD (esp. with the removal of "Hey You".)

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:29 (twenty-one years ago) link

Oh yes, it makes 100 times more sense as a double LP.

Lately I'm really quite fond of Japanese Whispers.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

Oh yes, it makes 100 times more sense as a double LP.

Lately I'm really quite fond of Japanese Whispers.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

Oh yes, it makes 430 times less sense as a bubble GT.

Lately I'm frilly bright fronds of Korean Hollers.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

This photocopy keeps getting smudgier.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:37 (twenty-one years ago) link

Is there a place to download or a compilation CD with the "Three Imaginary Boys Don't Cry" UK/US 'missing' tracks? That is: World War, Object, Foxy Lady, Meat HookMeathook ... Or do I have to buy "Three Imaginary Boys" AND "Boys Don't Cry"-UK version - to get all of thee songs. (What a fuckin' crock - one CD is long enough to hold all of that - but I have to buy THREE?)

― dave (Dave225), Thursday, 29 August 2002 16:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

You really think that about the end of the album, Dan?

Are you forgetting that I loathe "A Thousand Hours", Ned?

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 29 August 2002 20:10 (twenty-one years ago) link

"Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me was forged from such a large and varied pool of component tracks that it couldn’t satisfy everyone. There are a number of questionable inclusions on the record, and “Fight”, first and foremost, is horrifically dated and shallow. Why it closes the set is a mystery to critics and many fans, who'd rather it never saw the light of day. The deadened percussion effects and tacky keyboards set up a boring anthem of non-specific sloganeering. The band should have heeded its own advice here, and fought to compose a better finale; the final slot on Cure records has historically been reserved for more powerful, captivating material." - me

In short, "Fight" is the worst song The Cure released prior to Wild Mood Swings.

― Chris Ott, Thursday, 29 August 2002 23:21 (twenty-one years ago) link

Hey flowersdie: just 'cos they said they went straight for Head On The Door in Ten Imaginary Years doesn't make it so ;)

Those suits? Pure coke.

― Chris Ott, Thursday, 29 August 2002 23:22 (twenty-one years ago) link

i didn't know those songs weren't on the US versions. somewhat unintentionally, my boys don't cry is from holland and my three imaginary boys is german.

liz, obv. you have recommendations now for just about any cure record in existence. it seems like there's maybe an appreciation for more lo-fi kind of stuff for nz'ers?? maybe thats not true, but i'm saying that b/c of things duane and di have put on tapes for me, i dont know if your tastes might run along the same veins. blah, what i'm getting at is that you might like the curiosity album. kind of hard to find maybe but if you'd like to, e-mail me and maybe i could send you a tape or something.

― ron (ron), Thursday, 29 August 2002 23:48 (twenty-one years ago) link

I have a bootleg CD that has the Curiosity stuff teamed up with Carnage Visors...one of my most treasured Cure CDs, even though I don't listen to it so much. Now if I could only get the stuff on the b-side of the Staring at the Sea cassette on CD...

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Friday, 30 August 2002 00:56 (twenty-one years ago) link

yeah, to me its pretty much bullshit to have three cassette only releases. no offense to tape lovers (petra etc.)

― ron (ron), Friday, 30 August 2002 01:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

you guys have got be believing in the cure ? i'll have to have a weekend with charnet and get back to you

― george gosset (gegoss), Friday, 30 August 2002 01:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

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