what Cure album should I get next?

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Okay I got "Faith" recently and love it. What now?
I listened to them a fair bit when I was 13-15 (1989-1991), Disintegration which I still have but only on tape and my tape players are no good so yes you can recommend ones I already know...which also include Three Imaginary Boys Seventeen Seconds (I'm afraid to listen to this because I'm a bit depressed wow I think it must be the most depressed sounding album I know) and the Staring at the sea singles. I guess I should go for Pornography since it comes after Faith (I think?) but I just wanted some input.

― spectra, Thursday, 29 August 2002 04:55 (twenty-three years ago)

pornography!!! it's pretty much the only one i can stand, though.

― your null fame, Thursday, 29 August 2002 04:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Pornography's okay, but The Top and The Head on the Door are essential. Also, invest in a copy of Disintegration that you can listen to.

― paul cox, Thursday, 29 August 2002 05:05 (twenty-three years ago)

Does Pornography have much in common with Faith?

― spectra, Thursday, 29 August 2002 05:23 (twenty-three years ago)

or you could try The Rapture's album instead and be all here and now about that Cure sound.

― phil turnbull (philT), Thursday, 29 August 2002 06:01 (twenty-three years ago)

ned must thread of course!

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 29 August 2002 07:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Search The Millpond Years by And also the Trees and A Monument of Trust by the Essence (both very Faith-like)

I think The Top has dated very badly.

― flowersdie, Thursday, 29 August 2002 07:41 (twenty-three years ago)

The Top hasn't dated badly at all. It has always been rubbish.
I think Wish is underrated and their best album from the 90s. A rather lush melancholic sound. Disintegration was 89, wasn't it?

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Thursday, 29 August 2002 08:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Wish also perhaps sowed the seeds of destruction for the band because the follow up, Wild Mood Swings, attempted a continuation of the same diversity of that album but included very crap songs (bar Treasure) and embarassing lyrics such as "I'm so fizzy I could burst" urgh!

You could be right about The Top, however.

― flowersdie, Thursday, 29 August 2002 09:03 (twenty-three years ago)

However 'Remember Me' from Wild Mood Swings (a take on the Christina Rosetti poem) is very touching indeed... I like.

― Fevvers, Thursday, 29 August 2002 09:17 (twenty-three years ago)

"Remember Me" = "Treasure" = best song on _WMS_ (other songs of note: "Want", "Jupiter Crash", "Gone!", "Bare", "Trap").

I would suggest either _Pornography_ or _Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me_ as your next purchase.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 29 August 2002 09:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Wish is underrated and their best album from the 90s

That's sounds like high praise, but remember, they only released two albums in the 1990s.

I personally wouldn't get The Top either. The first couple of songs are okay, but overall, it's pretty forgettable.

I can't remember which one Faith is (I have ...Happily Ever After, so I can never remember which one is Faith and which one is Seventeen Seconds), but I'd recommend getting Seventeen and Pornography next, because those three all represent a certain phase in the band's existence. I'll also second Kiss Me.... I think there's a lot of filler on there, but it does also contain a lot of the Cure's best work.

― Vic Funk, Thursday, 29 August 2002 10:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Vic speaks truth about Pornography and Seventeen Seconds (probably my second favourite album after Disintegration). Everyone is speaking nonsense about The Top, though...there's a lot of great stuff on that one, like "Shake Dog Shake" and "Bananafishbones" and "Give Me It" and more. I've never understood why people are so hung up on Kiss Me3; yeah, there's some good stuff there but there's definitely a lot of filler. Avoid Wild Mood Swings at all costs.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Thursday, 29 August 2002 10:53 (twenty-three years ago)

Three Imaginary / Boys Don't Cry - "If not for his massive alcohol intake, Robert Smith would be a perfect replacement, but he won't leave the Cure" - Siouxsie's manager on filling the guitarist slot

Seventeen Seconds + Faith = more drinking, increasing cocaine use

Pornography - drinking, any drug on the table including heroin, infighting

Let's Go To Bed / Lovecats era - Robert Smith does cocaine 24/7, starts dropping acid with Steve Severin, does The Glove record, then

The Top - Reactionary "I'm still angry and serious" album, heavy hallucinogen and heroin abuse, drinking continues

Head On The Door / KMKMKM / Disintegration / Wish - cocaine, cocaine, cocaine, drinking, cocaine

Wild Mood Swings - E, booze

Obviously, Smith's best work is done under the mirror's influence.

― Chris Ott, Thursday, 29 August 2002 11:13 (twenty-three years ago)

forget "the cure", try "prozac" if you're in a bad way, choose "life"

― george gosset (gegoss), Thursday, 29 August 2002 11:28 (twenty-three years ago)

ned must thread of course!

OH MUST I. ;-)

Dan's recommendations = sound. Follow them duly. Alex in Mainhattan's note about The Top should be disregarded (he is very right about Wish, though). Disintegration probably remains my singular favorite, though Faith is the very close runner up.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 29 August 2002 11:34 (twenty-three years ago)

The Top and Blue Sunshine, definitely Acid albums, both rather unsuccessful attempts at psychedelia...

The Cure famously(!) gave up drugs (apart from alcohol and Lol baiting) for the Head on the Door album.

― flowersdie, Thursday, 29 August 2002 11:57 (twenty-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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

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

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

This photocopy keeps getting smudgier.

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

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

"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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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-three years ago)

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