A thread for the Cure reissues

friday has great chord progressions and all kinds of change ups, it's not just one riff.

Another reason Mint Car suffers is on Greatest Hits it comes right after Friday - after a whole hour of very nice stuff in fact - and it is gruellingly revealed as no equal

Smith thought Mint Car was a better single than Friday I'm In Love - on Mint Car's Wikipedia page

Just remembered it was Strange Attraction that got the heave-ho to fit WMS on a C60 back in 1996

This chat inspired me to have a bit of a Wild Mood Swings day today. Hadn't listened to it in full since I missed that DEK Magazine last year with the enormous anniversary feature in which Robert apparently reflects on the album in thorough detail - still bummed that hasn't turned up anywhere else because I'm very interested to hear his thoughts on certain aspects in hindsight esp since he has been known in the past to parade it as one of their best albums (while studiously almost completely avoiding it live).

It's (still) a delightful mess, but I'm always attracted to the big 'failures' in the discographies of bands I love. I wasn't there in 95 so/but it feels strangely out of time to me - not in a positive sense as such, just that it seems a galaxy away from Wish, like the band had been 'completed' in 1993 or so and then there's just this strange album of underwritten and incongruent songs that seems to come much much much later even though it was actually just a few years.

Always confuses me how they pushed "The 13th" as the lead single knowing it would flop and still booked a tour that was longer than Wish and played to the same size (enormous) venues - many of which did not sold out and some in the US even having to be cancelled for bad sales. This is what I want to read explored in detail somewhere.

In 96!

Man, I loved The 13th. I was hoping the entire album would be horny and fun but it was sort of a drag. Song by song it's not bad, but strung together as an album it turns into a slog.

I have a friend who has zero time for The Cure, but he is passionately of the opinion that The 13th is their best song.

It’s crazy how irrelevant they felt in 1995/6 - I remember reading about them playing one of the UK Festivals (Reading maybe?) and even seeing the name felt like an echo from the distant past. The lineup change was pretty catastrophic but it also felt like RS had lost his touch at offering playful reflections of the sound of the day. For all his “we do what we want” rhetoric, he was always pretty adept at folding contemporary sonics into CureWorld, but no longer. Even the album art felt immediately dated and bad (a trend that would continue!)

Wild Mood Swings era is their last great era for artwork imo. After which I believe Robert wanted more say in their artwork if just for ever-growing control freak reasons, so Parched Art were outed and in came (beginning with the Five Swings Live EP) 'smART', which through Bloodflowers and The Cure just seems to amount to Robert Smith dicking around (and imo Driving Rain has nothing on Bloodflowers in the major act dropping a colossally amateur album cover stakes from around this time).

The most obviously mid-90s thing about WMS to me is "Club America", which everyone hates and all but it absolutely sounds like something from 1996. And the decision to use real strings on some songs instead of synth-strings feels like a post-MTV Unplugged trait (consciously so I think given that RS's original intention was for a stringy 'acoustic' album) (I guess it's quite a Britpoppish thing to do as well for what it's worth).

I remember spending so much time trying to convince myself I liked "Club America"

The most frustrating thing about WMS is that the good songs (Want, The 13th, Trap, Numb, Treasure, Bare) are REALLY good and even some of the not-quite-good songs have their charms (Jupiter Crash, Gone!, Round & Round & Round, okay maybe The 13th actually belongs on this list but I like it too much to fully admit that), so it's a frustrating situation where I actually like more than half of the album but the songs I dislike are SO BAD that it torpedoes the entire thing. I'm looking at the track list right now to make sure I haven't missed anything and just seeing the title "Return" is making me seethe.

I think the turning point for me was seeing them tour the album, where some of the songs I hated came alive (particularly Round & Round & Round) and others were just INTERMINABLE PILES OF WANK (Strange Attraction) and I was like "you know what, I don't actually have to like this album and that doesn't make the band mean any less to me"

"Smith thought Mint Car was a better single than Friday I'm In Love"

he also has said that WMS is his favorite Cure album which...wtf

"Wild Mood Swings era is their last great era for artwork imo"

It's the start of the decline IMO. what even is that on the cover? a pencil topper? the typography looks cheap as well (as did lots of album artwork at this point in the 90's). It's better than the tacky unforgiveable Bloodflowers cover which looks like some fan drawn artwork

I like the photography a lot throughout the WMS era. All the single sleeves look particularly good IMO - for all that they are photographs of toys I enjoy the slightly delirious colours, angles etc. and I think this continues throughout the WMS CD and a lot of the related promo.

There's other shots of the clown on the cover used on posters etc. He's even inverted on the tour programme (which would have made a pretty good album cover as well imo).

Possibly I am quite keen to be favourable because the Bloodflowers artwork really truly is hideous. The booklet with the Times New Roman and really basic Powerpoint-looking editing is shocking.

yeah it's the worst art in the catalog, just shit. I dislike predominantly white covers in general unless they are the White Album or some black and white thing. The color pattern looks like ugly watercolors. Don't get me started on the s/t artwork either. Dream was obviously better in some ways but it basically looks like the album sounds, an ugly and off attempt to redo sounds from KMKMKM/Disintegration/Wish that doesn't measure up.

Porl was always really careful and methodical with the typefaces and the contrast is especially obvious with shit like the 2004 logo, which they proceeded to use on everything that year. But an ugly, sloping, scrawled wordmark still sadly fits an album with production like that ("The way you so carefully couldn't care less" as RS once sang).

Post-90s their only great artworks have been for compilations. Bestival looks like an old iTunes exclusive but it was an album I could buy in HMV.

the kid artwork on the s/t isn't beautiful or anything but i'd say it fits the vibe of the album. bloodflowers is just a "graphic design is my passion" meme that's real

Bestival kind of sounds like shit, IMO

I'm still amused that Bestival is 1) the only Cure album on Bandcamp and 2) the only album thus far with Reeves Gabrels on it, even though he's now been in the band for over a decade.

(Although I guess the Anniversary box set counts too but that feels more like its own separate monument than an album.)

yeah, the band is firmly in "legacy act" mode by now — which just makes the tardiness of the reissues even more frustrating.

I gave myself a Twitter project today:

I’m going to listen to Wild Mood Swings front to back today. I don’t like this album but I love some of the songs on it; I’m mostly wondering if I still hate the songs I hated previously

— DJP (@djperry1973) August 4, 2022

(SPOILER ALERT: I do still hate the songs on this I hated before)

"Return" is my favourite of the forced pop songs but I think that's entirely down to the rinkydinky keyboards in the chorus. Without those there is no song (or rather there is "Round & Round & Round")

I think the entirety of Return is an affront to the concept of music

I take Return over RoundX3 and Strange Attraction any day. The nice little guitar riff under all the fake horns redeems it somewhat

djp otm "return" is astonishing bullshit by any measuring stick

i like every song on wms except “club america” which is maybe the closest thing to an objective misfire i’ve ever heard and it’s track two

ste says it's perfect pop

― ミ💙🅟 🅛 🅤 🅡 🅜 🅑💙彡 (Austin), Tuesday, August 2, 2022 8:26 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

probably wrote it years ago

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 2, 2022 8:27 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Pretty sure that's his original review from '96, as I believe it appears verbatim in the '97 AMG book.

Mystified why AMG has never bumped Wish from a 2.5 to something even slightly higher. The next three are all 3s.

just quietly, it's because it sucks

Wish deluxe pushed to November 25th

lol

It's a Christmas wish, you see.

Thanksgiving's gonna be dark this year

Perhaps by Bloodflowers RS was just influenced by all the new recently-dropped former major label bands' albums who'd lost access to skilled design companies

It looks as though they'd intended the album to be - in true 2000 style - an online-only release.

yeah, that's otm

https://open.spotify.com/album/4W7kDAiCJ3euyQPo0RU64g?si=uax8zk-VS9GvVYKt4fy8KQ

^^"cut" and "uyea sound" demos on spotify

really? nobody has anything to say?

an official release of "uyea sound" guys! IT'S HAPPENING!

Well yeah but we all have it already

Wish is getting the picture-disc treatment for the Record Store Day Thanksgiving-Interruption.

https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/15634

30th anniversary limited edition of The Cure’s hit best-selling, Grammy-nominated album Wish, pressed on double picture disc for the first time, exclusively for RSD Black Friday. Featuring the hit singles “High”, “Friday I’m In Love” and “A Letter To Elise”. This double picture disc edition features newly remastered audio by Robert Smith and Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios.

Picture disc is the best format for the quality of RS’ recent remasters.

'A Letter To Elise' is the latest Cure video to be remastered, watch the full HD version now at https://t.co/J48FyjKS5p and pre-order your 30th anniversary copy of 'Wish' at https://t.co/AfZQwQKZBW #wish30 pic.twitter.com/TjYRR0gyMy

— The Cure (@thecure) September 16, 2022

"wendy time" demo >>>>>>>>>>

"t6" was not expected

"abetabw" O_O

shame how they kept the slinky subfunk grooves alive post-kiss me but always ended up shelving them. "frogfish" reminds of some of the equally hilarious wahwah'd outtakes from the disintegration extras. they practically had an unreleased ep of "wendy time"s and "hot hot hot"s by the time rs fully embraced it; and there was had "the 13th" and the world was finally a better place.🌞

but seriously, this has fully exceeded expectations. the best of the unheard stuff is on par with the best of the series. extended mixes are old mixtape fodder and play like "classic rock" to me, but ymmv. otherwise, if you like this album and want to get lost in it a little bit, this paints a much finer picture of the band at the time and i understand feeling compelled to make it a double album. yay.

I just bought this, I don't buy CDs anymore but keeping my Cure collection up to date.

i didn’t get much out of the demos/out-takes - could definitely see why the latter didn’t progress

however! for ages I’ve bought into the fan semi-othodoxy that there was a better Wish to be had, if some of the b-sides had been elevated to the LP

listening to the scraps i can sort of understand that an LP with play/big hand/twilight garden/halo would have been much more firmly in the Disintegration mode - ie the record i wanted at the time - and that Smith’s decision to go for a kaleidoscopic guitar album was probably his last good bit of instinctual pop relevance decision-making?

ie i think it was a very good judgement at the time