The Cure: Classic or Dud?

listening to that pod cast "i just finished Wish and it's next."

happy happy, joy joy!

Man this is pretty bad. Sounds like he sat at his computer and just slapped some EDM synth plugin presets all over his original vocals. "Just One Kiss" is the only somewhat freaky and ok one out of them all. Terrible.

"Clearly the Cure as an entity isn't fully in charge or RS wouldn't be doing that show as Robert Smith and Friends."

I don't know. Maybe Simon has some rights....but as for this, roger didn't even know this was coming out; he learned it from me on facebook.

If the tracks were the originals it would pretty much be my own Cure "Best Of". But I lean towards the "this is horrible" camp.

No surprise there. RS has lost his ear for music in the late 90s. Don’t think he spent much time on this though

Extremely great interview by a board vet here

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/07/the-cures-robert-smith-i-was-very-optimistic-when-i-was-young-now-im-the-opposite

Had no idea they used Plainsong in Ant Man. I'm never going to watch the movie. Was it good?

that's a great interview, thanks for posting Ned!

the great thing about "Plainsong" in that movie is that it's so prominent. they played the full song too or pretty close from what i remember. all in slow motion. the movie is a super hero movie if you are into that sort of stuff. i am, so i liked it.

found it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9urW_X0LJss

there's a difference between "written by Joe out of Adam & Joe and directed by Peyton Reed" and "written & directed by Zack Snyder" or "written & directed by Frank Miller"

Great interview yeah. I wonder what Bob made of Plainsong being used in Toni Erdmann..

since Parry sold off the business, Robert seems to have been happy to license songs to any film that asks.

speaking of, i found this in regards to:

(07/23/15): Director Peyton Reed tells Film School Rejects how and why this scene happened.

Reed also would’ve been upset if Marvel couldn’t secure the rights for a song from The Cure’s finest album, Disintegration. Ant-Man may be the first movie in history to have a song by The Cure playing during one of its big set pieces. At one point Ant-Man and Yellow Jacket fight in a briefcase to the amazing sound of ‘Plainsong’. “In the briefcase battle, we knew we wanted to have an iPhone joke,” Reed says. “We had all these different versions of jokes, like, Yellow Jacket saying, ‘You’re going to end up dead!’ and then you’d hear ‘Searching for the nearest Panera Bread.’ There were some funny jokes and some not-so-funny jokes, but, at the end of the day, they were just jokes. What if he activated the music feature? What would it be? I’m a massive Cure fan. We came up with a bunch of things, but we thought we could find a joke for ‘disintegration.’ The first song on Disinigration, which is the second CD I ever bought, was ‘Plainsong’. It’s such an epic song that it transcended the joke — scoring this whole battle in a briefcase. There was this weird, cold wave goth vibe, changing the character of that action scene. You have all these action scenes you want to have a different flavor. Then it became a question of, ‘Will [The Cure frontman] Robert Smith let us use his music?’ He ended up loving it, so he did.”

BTW, for those who didn't read the article that Ned linked, possible new The Cure album after 10 years. God, i hope so!

Yeah, but Robert Smith said it, so there's a 99% chance it's just slightly drunken bullshit.

so finally got around to listen to the new remixes - not as bad as I thought, although very throwaway.
The cheesy Avalon-ish version of Night Like This for instance is pretty great. The actual mixing though is pretty crap (as usual), with vocals way too high up (this ruins what would otherwise be a pretty badass version fo Shake Dog Shake)

re-discovered how great the "Everything Mix" of 'The Walk' was. Weird to think that remix is nearly 30 years old - it really sounds like it could have come out last month.

That's a great interview - I enjoyed reading Robert's thoughts on his approach to writing lyrics. While I can understand why he shies away from certain kinds of approaches, I'd be interesting in seeing what kind of lyrics he's come up with while deviating from his preferred methods.

i finally listened to the remix album today and it wasn't bad. i do own the original CD but i'm not a remix type of person, so i never really warmed up to it. this new version is not bad but is still a remix album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2E3EWhvDsc

Hi Turrican :)

so weird how the fest was billed as old members coming back and drastically different versions of songs and then none of that happened.

no surprise here

Might as well throw this out there in this thread:

My take a Cure album that never was--but that I suspect may have been intended to be at some point--circa 'Wild Mood Swings' but IMO far superior to that album, comprised of a few album tracks and some of the b-sides, almost all of which are superior to the album that was released. There were enough tracks in that era that heavily featured string instruments--not something they often did before then--that it makes me think at some point that was a sound they had in mind for an album. The vibe is just too coherent and consistent for it to be an accident--a lot of the b-sides even have album-style intro-outro segue portions, such that it all hangs together rather nicely as an album. I would rate it around the equal as 'Wish,' which for me is to say not amazing but quite good, a few spotty mid-90s production flourishes notwithstanding.

https://scontent.fzty1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/20045576_10159281061750495_3240874481460166229_o.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=84d76d07d27915aa6b90954cb2abd7be&oe=5BB337C1

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

http://www.mediafire.com/file/8f97pneclpg72ut/ThisIsALie.zip/file

Yeah I think RS has alluded to this a few times. He was planning to release a Nick Drake influenced set of songs and worked with strings for quite a bit, at a time when he was the only remaining member of the band. I guess when Simon came back he decided to /had to go back to a more traditional sound. Anyway, the idea sounded good on paper, but always found these acoustic and strings songs incredibly dull and lifeless.

The liner notes for Join the Dots confirms as much: RS initially envision Wild Mood Swings as an all acoustic album.

*envisioned

I find hearing it all together as a 50-min. album, it really works. It's not especially acoustic, but it does feature strings heavily.

I don't think the Judge Dredd tune would be on it. I think he never really liked it and it just sounds like what it probably is, something to fill up a soundtrack.

Really digging this unrecord, Soundslike! I don't know much Cure post-Wish (have listened through them all 1x or 2x but without sparking much interest) but these are sounding great.

now someone post zips of DJP's mostly-b-sides versions of the last two albums plz

So the trend of b-sides being better than album cuts has continued post-'Wild Mood Swings'? I admit I didn't follow past there. . .

there are fewer b-sides overall but many of them are quality. all the various s/t bonus tracks are great

Enh, the self-titled's non-album material was pretty strong, but the 4:13 Dream stuff was hit or miss. 'Down Under' and 'Without You' are decent.

Same with Bloodflowers. There weren't really any "b-sides" from that album, but the outtakes and related recordings from the time are kind of meh.

"Spilt Milk" is from the Bloodflowers era and is all time.

It's alright. Definitely the better of the "lost" songs surrounding that album.

Coming Up, the Australian bonus track, was deeply meh, but I don't know what else was an outtake from around then. Of the two new songs for the Greatest Hits the next year, Cut Here is great and Just Say Yes is underwhelming but tolerable.

While I'm posting, here's Wolf Alice clashing Boys with Boys Don't Cry for an Australian radio session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg1ocz7TUL4

Really enjoyed the Hyde Park event yesterday evening. The sound could have been a bit better, but it was an interesting mixed crowd and good atmosphere. I stood rooted to my spot for the whole set and my knees were 'locked' when i went to move: the old person's personal indicator of a good gig.

I was going to go but I asked a friend if they were interested when it was first announced and they said the sound is always shit in Hyde Park because of draconian noise level restrictions so I gave it a miss, the ticket price made that decision easier

Hi dere. I’ve got a question that’s probably been asked or answered a dozen times, perhaps by me, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that part of Robert Smith’s guitar sound was an intentional detuning of some of the strings, perhaps making the high E string a bit sharp. Now I can’t find this anywhere so I am asking for a friendhere while the thread is live.

That's a good question! I know RS (like other guitarists) had an epiphany that what the chorus effect was doing was in essence just detuning his guitar, so I can see how he might make that leap, though in practice it seems a pretty imprecise way to go. I know he did use a six-string bass - tuned up? - as his guitar quite a bit, which also throws off nailing his sound, at least sometimes.

Yeah I saw something about a Fender VI, I think it was

Here’s something about that. Interesting that he wrote “Primary” on one but then used a Precision to record it.

Link I meant to add: http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3687

Sad news

Andy Anderson, Former Drummer For The Cure, Reveals He Has Terminal Cancer

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2019/02/20/andy-anderson-the-cure-cancer/

Saw that yesterday on reddit.

I swear, if we're ranking the members of the Cure just based on how cool they looked in their tenure with the band, Andy wins easily. One cool bloke, to be absolutely clear.

ticket ballot is open for four nights of them playing Disintegration at the Sydney Opera House btw

Really is awful news about Anderson. Hoping Robert mentions him at the HoF ceremony for sure.

So, so sad.

Aw no, absolutely shit news. The most underrated of all the Cure drummers.