The Cure: The Head on the Door
1985
Fiction Records
Format I Own it on: Compact Disc
Track Listing: 1. In Between Days 2. Kyoto Song 3. The Blood 4. Six Different Ways 5. Push 6. The Baby Screams 7. Close to Me 8. A Night Like This 9. Screw 10. Sinking
This would have seemed impossible just an album or two before, but here it is...The Cure as stadium pop superstars...And what's even more amazing, is that "the Head on the Door" isn't dumbed down for public consumption one iota...Probably some of the most intelligent and uncompromising singles to ever hit the charts...
You know this is a whole new ballgame as soon as the bouncy beat of "In Between Days" starts and in comes a jangly acoustic strum that seems to not have a care in the world...Although you can't really say the same for Robert, as he sings, "Yesterday I got so old, I felt like I could die..." I'm saying it...This is probably the best song in the entire Cure discography....The only runner-up is "One Hundred Years," for different reasons...Between those two tracks you get an almost complete picture of what the Cure were about...Here, listen to it real quick...
"Kyoto Song" comes on next and it becomes apparent that the band has nailed that world-music feel they'd attempted on "The Wailing Wall," except this time they go for a moody, Asian vibe... They lose the abrasiveness that previously marked these excursions, but none of the mystery...You can clearly picture them pulling this off in a stadium show..."The Blood" goes for more of a Latin feel, with the hardest strummed acoustic guitar I've ever heard and an Esteban-worthy Spanish guitar solo...
"dun diddle dun dun dun dun..."
"Six Different Ways" is another wonderland fantasia in the vein of "Caterpillar" from "The Top." Come to think of it, "The Head on the Door" is just as diverse as "The Top" but it seems to hang together so much better due to the uniformly strong songwriting...There isn't a single failed experiments here... The band seems much more professional and seasoned, squarely hitting every mark...And listen to how assured the big rock anthems like "Push" and "A Night Like This" are (by the way, when the sax solo comes in on "A Night Like This" is the best moment on the album...Before it comes on, you're sitting there saying to yourself, "Goddamn, this song has it all..." and then suddenly the saxophone comes on and takes it to a whole new level that you hadn't even anticipated..Just, hell yea...)
And just when you think the album can't get any better, on comes the perfect pop single "Close to Me." The snare drum can't get any tighter, the bass guitar groove couldn't be any more head-nodding, the vocals couldn't draw you in any more...It's just flawless...This version is lacking the horns that appear in the more popular single version and I kind of go back and forth over which version I prefer...I have to say that they made the right choice by keeping the album version more low-key and the horns make the song pop right out of the speakers whenever you hear the song on the radio, so...I'm glad they both exist...
(Here's the horn version of "Close to Me" by the Cure...)
Album closer "Sinking" makes great use of the "extended-intro" songwriting method that the band would use extensively on their subsequent albums...I kind of just wanted to single this song out for a fine example (along with "Close to Me" and the industrial dance-rocker "Screw") of Simon Gallup's excellent bass-playing...Really, this whole album is top-notch...It truly defines an era...The type of big 80's alternative that you'd see all over 120 minutes back in the day...Big, haired kids with colorfully dour Cure posters plastered all over their walls...I was pretty young when all this was going on, so I'm probably missing some of its impact, but I think to this day it's still a teenage rite every weird teenage kid goes through...I certainly had my Cure posters on the wall growing up, but they were for "Wish" and "Wild Mood Swings"...Oh, well...
Here's "A Night Like This" by the Cure...Enjoy....
The Cure: Quadpus
1986
Elektra Records
Format I Own it on: Vinyl
Track Listing: 1. A Night Like This 2. New Day 3. Close To Me (12" Mix) 4. A Man Inside My Mouth
A 12-inch Ep that I picked up for a couple of tracks I didn't have...There's "A Night Like This" and
Close to Me" from "The Head on the Door." "A Night Like This" is the exact same version that appears on that album, but the version of "Close to Me" is an extended remix, that has a longer handclap/bass guitar/horn intro...Not any better or worse than the original, just longer...
"New Day" is a hellish affair, where monks chant behind a drum machine and Robert manages to get about 8 syllables out of the word "New." According to legend, Robert was hospitalized from exhaustion after recording this track...I don't know if it's worth all that, but it is a pretty good song...
"A Man Inside My Mouth" is more my speed though (boy that sounds bad), instrumentally, it sounds like my stomach after a long night of beer and pizza, but Robert reels off a speedy litany of comically surreal nightmare lyrics and it all comes together...All said this is a pretty neat single...I found the vinyl for cheap, but if you can't track it down, the Cure also released a box set of all their B-Sides and miscellanea in 2004 called "Join the Dots" that has all this stuff on it...But I don't have that release...so...
Here's "A Man in My Mouth" by the Cure...
The Cure: Standing on a Beach(vinyl Version)/Staring at the Sea (CD version)
1986
Elektra Records
Format I Own it on: Vinyl & Compact Disc
Track Listing: (Vinyl Version) 1. Killing an Arab 2. Boys Don't Cry 3. Jumping Someone Else's Train 4. A Forest 5. Primary 6. Charlotte Sometimes 7. The Hanging Garden 8. Let's Go to Bed 9. The Walk 10. The Love Cats 11. The Caterpillar 12. In Between Days 13. Close to Me
CD Version: 1. Killing an Arab 2. 10:15 Saturday Night 3. Boys Don't Cry 4.. Jumping Someone Else's Train 5. A Forest 6. Play for Today 7. Primary 8. Other Voices 9. Charlotte Sometimes 10. The Hanging Garden 11. Let's Go to Bed 12. The Walk 13. The Love Cats 14. The Caterpillar 15. In Between Days 16. Close to Me 17. A Night Like This
This was a very popular compilation of singles that everybody seemed to own back in the day...And with good reason...The Cure are one of the all-time great singles bands, so it's just track after track of killer songs...Some of the Seventeen Seconds/Faith/Pornography material tends to not come across as strongly outside of its original context, and it'd be nice of "One Hundred Years" was on here, but all told, it's pretty fucking perfect.
I've already covered everything on the album, except the non-album single "Charlotte Sometimes," which is another goth-pop drum-machine classic that has the same foggy atmospheric sound as the "Faith" album...Probably would have livened that album up quite a bit, actually...I for one love the super-fake drums on this...Oh yea, this is also where you find the horn version of "Close to Me."
This album is remarkable for having a different track listing in every format...I have the vinyl and Compact Disc (the vinyl is shorter, omitting the tracks, " 10:15 Saturday Night," "Play for Today," "Other Voices," and "A Night Like This." I don't have the cassette, but it definitely seems to be the way to go, since it has all the B-Sides on it...
So let's check out "Charlotte Sometimes" by the Cure. Enjoy...
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