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.

And/or David M. Allen. And Mike Hedges (who I always get confused with Mike Thorne, who might have also been a good choice for those early albums).

I regard Allen as the guy who handled the tapes and the mixing board.

Could be! There are a few moving parts, but it may also be more than a coincidence that the band started to trip itself up after he was gone. That's why Jimmy Page mostly made sure to pick a different engineer for every Zeppelin album, so that he always got (reputational) credit for the production.

That's fair.

Allen had a strong hot streak there (among other productions, First And Last And Always plus Strange Times by the Chameleons).

and Book of Days.

True!

I think Allen had a pretty strong influence (even though he might not have a personal sound signature) - his departure and the fact RS started getting lazy on production and arrangement explains why the songs got much less interesting from 1992 onwards

Meantime:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-cure-hint-new-album-in-the-works-1235448487/

The band’s official website updated its lengthy bio section in recent weeks, with fans noticing one especially noteworthy sentence added to the career-spanning write-up: “In March 2025 the band went back into Rockfield Studios to record 13 more songs for a follow up album.”

Additionally, the bio noted that Smith also went “back into the studio to help reedit and remix The Show of a Lost World film …,” which is likely the in-the-works concert film of a November 2024 performance at London’s Troxy, where they performed Songs of a Lost World in its entirety as well as other Cure classics.

“In March 2025 the band went back into Rockfield Studios to record 13 more songs for a follow up album.”

lol

"...they're still recording them now!"

Looking forward to this album in 2040

Just need to finish recording a couple of vocals and we’re done

I wonder tho - RS has talked about feeling he doesn’t have all that much time as a performing artist left, and the rapturous reception for SOALW must do a lot for his confidence in putting something out.

lol wasn't the follow-up supposed to have been nearly complete before songs of a lost world was released? my only hope is that the mix & master is less horrendous

I think Allen had a pretty strong influence (even though he might not have a personal sound signature)

idk i think he did have a pretty clear sound signature, that classic run of albums all have the same sound to them that the later albums departed from (for the worse)

their set at the 2012 Pinkpop festival:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEc2os_rj6c

Someone uploaded a straight rip of the 'In Orange' laserdisc yesterday, if you don't want to truck with weird looking AI upscaled versions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obh-pPPFaW4

This is truly a blessing.

this revive sent me poking around the band's official youtube channel and a couple years ago they posted the entirety of the vhs the cure play out. neat.

Entirety and, indeed, an expansion of it.

No fair -- I want my In Orange to always look as grainy as my VHS copy.

You must embrace the new.

Shot over two nights supposedly, close-ups done without an audience the following night?

Incredibly I actually saw this in a real AMC cinema in 1991 about three miles from my house.

Rewatching Play Out has been a blast. I really loved that period (where my fandom was at its peak)

The funny thing about In Orange is I've never seen so many people dressed in white at a Cure concert.

Even goths know it's better to wear white on a sunny day in August, in the south of France, in a coliseum without shade.

the band can wear black, they've been backstage all day and the venue is full of fans (badum-tss)

They were so absurdly popular in France in the 80s, the normie kids were way into it.

The amount of French TV clips from 1985 to 1989 alone on YouTube is kinda amazing. There was that mini-documentary as well, I think? Or was that a UK effort just filmed in France?

Even goths know it's better to wear white on a sunny day in August, in the south of France, in a coliseum without shade.

https://gothsinhotweather.blogspot.com/

xpost - the biggest international music show on French TV 1981-1988 was Les Enfants Du Rock. Its theme song was an instrumental version of Just Like Heaven.

It still feels strange to hear him sing over it.

(Can't find when it started being the theme song: exactly but it's the most iconic one)

well, not until 1987 presumably

All Cure songs are in fact covers of well known French TV themes, thus their popularity there.

Secretly "Boys Don't Cry" is in fact a cover of the famed French remake of a 70s UK series,

Manoir de Bosom

Shoulda be just ital there but anyway!

Boris has such a lovely bounce, it's lovely to see him play Six Different Ways, watch him go!

Haven’t thought about it in years but our local-TV clip show “TazRock” had “Primary” as its theme music back in the early 80s.

Xxxxp well actually Robert gave Enfants du rock an instrumental version of JLH before the record was even done. I think the show started in 1986

Well there ya go.

I started listening to Songs of a Lost World again and there are so many interesting little production flourishes in the songs that I hadn’t noticed until different remixes highlighted them

I also like Warsong a hell of a lot more now

Boy, the restoration of In Orange astonished me.

I also like Warsong a hell of a lot more now

― our beloved RIFF LORD (DJP)

One of Boy George's catchier choruses, agreed.

looks like it debuted as theme of les Enfants du Rock in February 1987

Boy, the restoration of In Orange astonished me.

As well it should!

and it took me back to our discussion a few days ago about Smith's guitar prowess. The guy could plays conventional leads, rhythm-strum, add texture and color.

I remember the film being something of a quiet landmark in San Diego at the time of release -- like it ran there for a while, in theaters? I have no idea if it was say a regular daily scheduled thing but clearly one theater at least was showing it for a while and advertising for it regularly in the local paper's listings. Doesn't surprise me in retrospect, especially if a bunch of Cure-crazed folks were also coming over from Tijuana to see it too.

I had a cassette copy of the audio (a 100-minute cassette, so it unceremoniously ends halfway through 10:15 Saturday Night) but I believe we rented the VHS a couple times

pedant moment re:rs and guitaring―
some of his most outspoken favorite artists were/are nick drake and john martyn. neither shredders, but guitar heroes in their own respective ways imo. different topic for different thread, but yeah. i didn't spend a few years there downloading and listening to cure bootlegs for the drumming iykwim.

i love rs' playing, mostly because it's like he's actively trying to not do 'the obvious thing.' he can, but he's silly. feels like the guitar equivalent of the moving spotlight gag at times. those later epic jams on "a forest" left their mark on me.