The Cure: Wish

The Cure: Wish

1992

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Open  2. High  3. Apart  4. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea  5. Wendy Time  6. Doing the Unstuck  7. Friday I'm in Love  8. Trust   9. A Letter to Elise  10. Cut  11. To Wish Impossible Things  12. End




Oh yes, I remember when this album came out...Vividly...I had recently fell head-over-heels in love with "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" and when the cassette of this suddenly appeared on the shelves (and "Friday I'm in Love" started appearing on the radio), I hit the lawn mower and earned some cash...

"There, I spent 5 hours mowing your 40 acre lawn...That'll be five dollars, please..."

To this day, when I listen to this album I still sometimes catch a faint whiff of lawn clippings and gasoline and suddenly I'm acne-studded and wearing a Simpsons T-shirt again...

  I don' really know what I'm wearing in this picture...It appears to be a white skirt or something...I don't really recall wearing skirts but nothing would surprise me, really...I was just talking about this the other day, how back in the late 80's/early 90's the only eyeglasses you could find were 10 feet tall and 8 feet wide....And I'd make the worst choices too...

"I'll take the ones with the tiger print...I bet people won't fuck with me when they get a load of these babies...Roar!.. And if I get the lenses tinted it'll look  like I'm wearing the biggest, baddest pair of shades ever...Yes, I choose the no. 15 Shading..."Smoky wine"...Look out, ladies..."

And while you're at it, check out that long, lustrous mullet...I'm pushing bald now, as you can see in this picture of me taken at the Time Out lounge yesterday...

Alright, I didn't invite you here to look at stupid pictures of me...I invited you here so I can defend "Friday, I'm in Love"...

A lot of the group's fans tend to treat it like it's some dumb pop trifle unworthy of the great Cure...The band selling themselves out for a bit of radio airplay....But I disagree...I love the song! It's the Cure tackling British Invasion pop and having a bit of fun with their mopey image, with Robert acting like every day's the end of the world except Friday...And I personally relate to that sentiment...Notice the name of this blog isn't the Monday Morning Record party...Besides, compare this song to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA" or anything in the Black Eyed Peas discography and then talk to me about dumb pop trifles and trolling for airplay...

Besides, "High" is a waaaay dopier pop song than "Friday I'm in Love." Man, I can't stop thinking about that video they did for it with Robert flying around on the kite...lol...I almost feel like it's something I dreamed...Like there's no way they made that video...Like I'm remembering it wrong...But nope...Here it is...

But I like "High" too...I find its unguarded happiness kind of endearing...The only song on here that I dislike is the tasteless funker "Wendy Time" which is the only bomb-ola on the record...I can't understand it...Prior to this album, the group knew how to effectively utilize funk to their advantage, but they miss the mark so completely here (see "Club America" from "Wild Mood Swings" for another example of the band's mishandling of the genre)...

I think what I love best about this album is the focus on guitar...I can't help it...I love guitars...Can't get enough of 'em...And the band piles them on with this album with six-string epics like  "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea," de-emphasizing the keyboard drone that helped characterize "Disintegration." Which I think was the right move for the post-"Nevermind" guitar-based alternative explosion that was going on at this time...(Although, I do have to say, whenever "To Wish Impossible Things" comes on, I'm always fooled into thinking it's "Lullaby" for a second or two...)

The best of these guitar epics is the album closer, "End," which, to me, is the perfect Cure song...Thick layers of ringing guitars that gradually build in crashing intensity while Robert shouts his mantra, "Please stop loving me...I am none of these things..."  You'll find yourself holding your lighter high, like it was 1992...I don't think people do the lighter thing at shows anymore...

 I think you hoist your cellphone or something now...Unfortunately, you can't light your concert doob with a cellphone, so don't throw away those lighters just yet...

"Wish" has become one of the Cure albums I listen to the most now...Some of their more critically acclaimed works can seem like a bit too much of a commitment to me at times...I don't always feel like being drowned in an all-consuming tide of melancholy, or take a double-album length trip to alien worlds...Sometimes I just want some smart, catchy pop-rock and this is exactly what "Wish" is...No grand concept or mood-based trilogies here...And I think that's why this feels much shorter and breezier than the albums immediately preceding it, despite sharing a similarly bloated running time...This, to me, is the height of the "Mature" Cure style...All highs and lows flattened out and consistency achieved...

Here's "End" by the Cure...

The Cure: Disintegration

The Cure: Disintegration

1989

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Plainsong  2. Pictures of You  3. Closedown  4. Lovesong  5. Last Dance  6. Lullaby  7. Fascination Street  8. Prayers for Rain  9. The Same Deep Water as You  10. Disintegration  11. Homesick  12. Untitled






I didn't really get a chance to edit this so it probably rambles and there might be some mis-spelled wurds, but it doesn't matter because dammit, we all made it to Friday intact!

 Time to pull a few beers from the fridge...

 ...hook up the speakers and invite over a few  friends...And what good-time,  party-starting album are we going to throw on tonight to get the festivities started?

"Disintegration" by the Cure! Yea, I can see the party's raging now!

                                                            "TWEEEEEE!!!!!"

Alright...Maybe it's not the best record for livening up a party, but who cares...We're going to talk about it anyway...

In contrast to the blinding array of candy colors on display on "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," the band released possibly the most sparkling gray album ever recorded, "Disintegration."  Although it's often lumped in with "Pornography" or "Faith," I don't hear much of a connection with the inky, crippling despair of those earlier albums..."Disintegration" seems to be colored more by the gentler, everyday bleakness of a cold morning, or an indeterminable rainy day...In fact, I don't think you've truly experienced a dreary, rainy day if you haven't spent it listening to "Disintegration."

Not to mention, Robert Smith wasn't able to summon swirling beauty back in 1983 like he does in 1989..."Plainsong" is still startling in the way it constructs a vast, hazy palace right before your ears after about 25 seconds of relative silence...If it was easy to get momentarily lost in certain tracks from "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," you could spend an eternity roaming the halls in this place..Like it says in the liner notes, "Play them shits loud!"



Then comes the familiar chimes of the majestic "Pictures of You," which is about Robert losing his wallet?!?! This is what I mean about the underwhelming defeats of everyday life that just kind of add up to paint your life grey...

"Lovesong" was the album's big pop moment...A song Robert originally wrote as a wedding gift to his wife, it's a lot gloomier sounding than its origins would imply...

 "Here you go, honey...To celebrate the joyous occasion of our marriage, here's a dour, moping celebration of our love..."  (cavernous guitar and doom-laden drums....)

 Actually, I'm not sure where the dark cloud in he song comes from...The lyrics are very nice, actually...Probably all those minor chords...Either way, that faint hint of despair is exactly why the song will live on forever (Note: it's only out of the context of the album that the song sounds moody...It sounds like it radiates with pure positivity when heard next to the other tracks on the album...Although "Pictures of You" has always scanned as "joyous" to me too, despite the fact that most people tell me the song makes them want to cry...As usual, I'm probably missing something...)



I remember always catching the video for "Lullaby" on MTV back in the day...I loved the song, but I hated the fact there was an icky tarantula in the video...Yuck! Why didn't someone step on it?! But I guess it fits alright, cos he talks about a spider-man in the song...Oh yea....Whenever Robert sings about Spider-Man having him for dinner tonight, I know he means this guy...

But I can't help but think of this guy...

You might not wanna have dinner with that guy, Robert!

 He eats a lot of processed cheese! So much of it that he gets a backpack with his own face on it! That stuff's bad for your cholesterol!

Anyway, I want to take a poll...Is there anyone out there who's ever listened to "Lullaby" and not had the image of the Amazing Spider-Man flash in their head for even a split second?

To vote, just take a Sharpie and write a big, black permanent "X" in the 'Yes' or 'No' box on your computer screen...I will enter your house unexpectedly in the middle of the night to count your vote and I'll deliver the final results in a court of law where I will be judged before a jury of my peers and Almighty God himslelf...



To this day, Simon Gallup's amazing, aggressive opening bass-riff on "Fascination Street" never fails to hit me like it did the first time I'd heard it...I swear to you, the bass guitar he's playing it on must be at least 100 feet tall and have the power to summon sheets of metal rain...And Robert's shadowy guitar line compliments it beautifully...I've always considered this song to be the spiritual successor to "A Forest"...It has the same dreamy, urgent feeling,  although "Fascination Street" has more of a "your running from something but you're not actually going anywhere" vibe...Why is this song only 5 minutes long? Why not 30?  Why not a 100?

I've always considered "The Same Deep Water as You" and the title track to be the thick of the album... The point where "disintegration" becomes "DISINTEGRATION."  Vast, sprawling chasms of infinite guitars and keyboards that are somehow simultaneously icy yet warm and inviting...Like making peace with the fact that you're drowning in freezing water...Everything peaks in the title track, where Robert finally cuts loose after an oddly restrained vocal performance throughout the rest of the album:

"I leave you with photographs
Pictures of trickery
Stains on the carpet and
Stains on the memory
Songs about happiness murmured in dreams
When we both of us knew
How the end always is..."

Those lines are the National Anthem to Cure fans...We can reel that shit off in our sleep...I always go back and forth over whether I like the song  "Disintegration" or "Untitled" better...A lot of times I think "Disintegration" should of ended the album, but then when "Untitled" comes on the pendulum swings the other way...It's so sad and lovely, bopping along with its sing-songy vocal line...When it fades into the accordion at the ending and it sinks in that the album is over, I usually find myself sitting in silence for a half a minute afterwards thinking about how awesome it all is...

Most Cure fans will point to "Disintegration" as their favorite Cure album, and I would never argue with those people...It really is quite an achievement...And it is the most satisfying Cure album when I'm in a certain mood...But on the other hand there are Cure albums that work for me no matter what mood I'm in...Still, it's  unrelentingly beautiful and it sounds better and better with each passing year...Who knows, maybe next year it'll finally be my favorite Cure album...

Until then, here's "Plainsong" by the Cure...Happy Friday everyone...

The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

The Cure: Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me

1987

Elektra Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl and Compact Disc

Track Listing: Disc 1: 1. The Kiss  2. Catch  3. Torture  4. If Only Tonight We Could Sleep  5. Why Can't I Be You?  6. How Beautiful You Are...  7. The Snakepit  8. Hey You!!!

Disc 2: 1. Just Like Heaven  2. All I Want  3. Hot Hot Hot!!!  4. One More Time  5. Like Cockatoos  6. Icing Sugar  7. The Perfect Girl  8. A Thousand Hours  9. Shiver and Shake  10. Fight



Although it's definitely not my favorite Cure album now, "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" was absolutely the album that started my Cure obsession...An epic double album, it's the most Cure-iest of Cure albums...Almost like a little world full of colorful (and sometimes dangerous) exotic locales, it's easy to get overwhelmed and lost....

The album is odd, in that it feels overlong, but it's impossible to figure out exactly what to cut...Nearly all of the songs are strong. On the first few listens the fourth side seems particularly weak, but this is all an illusion...For proof of this,  listen to the second record first sometime (the sequencing never seemed that important anyway on this album, since it's many moods and styles are so compartmentalized...) and realize the same feeling of fatigue sets in somewhere around "The Snakepit" as it does when you get around to "A Thousand Hours"...Like you simply cannot take another bite...I honestly think it's just the fact that about 50 minutes of this stuff is all that a reasonable person can take...So if you ask me, "would this album be better as a single album?" I'd still have to say, "no." It wouldn't make any difference...

Again, it's an album to get lost in...You should feel homesick and spent while listening to it...Is the endless ocean of wah-wahed guitars and turbulent bass guitar on "The Kiss" two minutes or ten hours? It's hard to tell sometimes...Does "The Snakepit" really extend on until the end of time? Yes, I think it does...One thing I do know, the addition of uptempo soul-funk to the Cure sound is welcome, indeedy..."Hot, Hot, Hot!!!" and "Why Can't I Be You?" are party-starters for sure!



And the band is nice enough to toss us a few fine pop songs along the way..."Catch" is the most delicate distillation of their sound yet, and Robert's laid-back delivery is much easier on the ears than usual...If his histrionics are too much for you sometimes, you actually might like this track...New-wave swooners like "The Perfect Girl" and "How Beautiful You Are..." hit the sweet spot also...By the way, "How Beautiful You Are... " has one of my favorite opening lines:

"You want to know why I hate you?
Well I'll try and explain..."

For some reason that cracks my shit up... It sounds so reasonable yet unreasonable...I think I'm going to start saying that to people, "Huh? You want to know why I despise you so much...Alright, I'll tell you...Do you got a minute?"  Spoiler alert: It turns out he's talking about a pretty girl who ends up treating an old man and some poor, ragged children cruelly for being drawn to her beauty...The story really draws you in somehow, and you find yourself in the narrator's shoes, hating the girl too! God, these guys are good...



And then there's the big one...It took some time, but "Just Like Heaven" seems to have emerged as the Cure song in the public consciousness...It's not my personal favorite song by the group, but it's hard to argue against it...Everything about it is so iconic...The immortal opening bassline, the "she said" lyrics, Robert moaning, "I must have been asleep for days..." To me, the band has always sounded most convincing at the melancholic romance than the suicidal depression...

I do think the album deserves a stronger closer than "Fight" though...Can you imagine if they'd whipped up a monumental finish for the album? It'd probably help Side Four feel more alive than it does, in the same way that "Just Like Heaven" energizes Side Three...I think when I was talking about the seeming randomness of the sequencing earlier, that it uncharacteristically pounds to a close with an alright-ish industrial rocker epitomizes this feeling....

Ultimately, if you're looking to get into the Cure, I'd still recommend "The Head on the Door" over this, however your collection is nowhere near complete without it...There are a lot of definitive moments for the band here...And more than anything, this seemed to put them over the top here in the US...Classic, if not always the easiest album to sit through...

(Wow...Is it just me or did I stay 100% on topic today? I think I deserve a cookie or something...Is beer still considered a cookie?)

Here's  "The Perfect Girl" by the Cure...Enjoy....

The Cure: The Head on the Door/Quadpus/Standing on a Beach/Staring at the Sea

Between all the breaks for family visits and sickness, it feels like I should be further into the Cure discography than I am, so today I'm going to bust a bunch of these out...So break out the mascara and messy lipstick, we're doing an old-fahioned Cure marathon...
























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...

The Cure: The Top

The Cure: The Top

1984

Fiction Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Shake Dog Shake  2. Bird Mad Girl  3. Wailing Wall  4. Give Me It  5. Dressing Up  6. The Caterpillar  7.  Piggy in the Mirror  8. The Empty World  9. Bananafishbones  10. The Top



This is one of the odd Cure albums I'd never heard until recently...I just couldn't ever find a copy of it, since it had went out of print by the time I started buying Cure albums, so it had always been a bit of an enigma for me...Of course I had read all the reviews and heard all the talk about it being "the worst Cure album"...A confused transitional mish-mash that could never match the pitch-black majesty of "Pornography" or the kaleidoscopic pop of "The Head on the Door." A year or two ago I finally found a vinyl copy at Eastside Records and quickly picked it up to hear what I had been missing all these years...

I tend to find the Cure's discography to be pretty consistent...Listening to this, I can't shake the feeling that its failures often seem exaggerated in the name of giving critics some sort of angle when discussing the record...It still sounds like classic Cure to me, anyways...Very eclectic and all over the place, in stark contrast to the consistent mood of their previous three albums....But in the long run, the Cure would end up making many other albums in this far-ranging vein...

Still, I think I might work best if I break "The Top"  down track-by-track....That actually sounds kind of fun...I don't do this often...

1. Shake Dog, Shake: As you can probably glean from the track listing, a lot of the songs on this album feature animals in the title, so I thought it'd be nice to bust out that big, green tacklebox thing full of reference cards, so we could do a bit of cross-referencing..Anyway, "Shake Dog Shake" is something new...I don't think we've heard the band do thudding hard-rock before, but it suits them pretty well...And I like the swirling vortex of psychedelic guitar...

2. Bird Mad Girl: For some reason, I don't find this to be as weird as most Cure fans do...Romantic head-rush pop with flamenco overtones;  this would sound right at home on "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me."...Robert seems to have so many melodic ideas for the song and he appears to try them all, so it takes a couple listens to realize how many ear-worms he's packed into the track (my personal favorite moment being the "Some of this, some of that..." section...)

I guess the line about the polar bears is kind of weird, now that I hear it again...So is that suave falsetto croon that pops up from time-to-time...Either way, one of the best tracks on the album, and it would have worked great as a second single....

Wailing Wall: The Cure do world music! Actually, they'd end up doing this type of thing a lot of times throughout their career...Conjuring the sweltering mysticism of the middle-east with some guitars, drums, and a splash of keyboards...And that mass of wailing voices at the end have the ability to creep a fool out when listened to on proper headphones...

Give Me It: Somehow manages to be ear-splitting without loud guitars...Damn, those drums are turned up high...I can picture a young Trent Reznor hanging out in his college dorm, listening to this track and taking notes...Comes off as bit weak though...There doesn't seem to be any real idea here outside of, LET'S MAKE THIS FUCKER LOUD!!! Despite the hair-raising mix I find myself staring at my watch an awful lot during this song...Maybe if there was a killer hook buried in somewhere in there...

Dressing up: This song took a long time to grow on me...I'm a huge fan of 80's synthesizers, however, there's a couple of settings that seem to have aged poorly for me...a. That synth-hit sound that you hear on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and b. the Pan Flute Setting....A song featuring the Pan-Flute setting is just incapable of ever kicking ass...Oh, and this song also features poppin' funk-bass...So there's two strikes...But I don't know...Over the last week or so I've gone from dreading the song to looking forward to it...That "Dressing up, Dressing Up" chorus is insidious...The first couple listens are like, "That's it? That's the chorus?" Then suddenly you're humming it everywhere...I think I'm sold now...



The Caterpillar: One of the Cure's most bizarre (and best) singles...I don't even really know how to describe it, and I don't think "ebullient"  even begins to cover it...Random piano runs evoke the strange, bobbing flickflickaflickaflicka of butterfly wings, as Robert stutters about a cata-cata-cata-catapillar girl...It's always disorienting, like searching for a can of beans in the cupboard and suddenly finding your big, fat head peering into some colorful fantasy world for three minutes...Songs like this don't come around too often...

Piggy in the Mirror: I can still remember listening to this for the first time, hearing Robert camp it up during the ungainly verses and being turned off...Yuck...But then suddenly it blossoms into a beautiful, psychedelic Beatlesesque chorus and I couldn't help but fall in love...And somehow that initial experience still sums up the song for me...You feel kind of sick and awed at the same time...Brilliant, queasy pop...

The Empty World: Starts out like a grim death march, but then the piccolo-esque keyboard line comes in and there's an air of  hallucinogenic whimsy... I have a hard time not considering this track filler, though....

Bananafishbones: The title sets off all sorts of red flags for me, but man, this song is great...Featuring wordy lyrics and a thrilling, theatrical vocal delivery, this unlikely entry ends up being one of the tracks that steals the show...I'm chalking it up to an inventive keyboard performances that veers between a Late Night horror movie and 60's garage rock...By the way, I have no idea if a bananafish is a real animal or something JD Salinger made up...I couldn't find a photo of one anywhere, so I drew one in MS Paint...I imagine when you catch it, you peel it and there's fish-meat underneath...I also imagine the inside of the peel has scales...

The Top: I bet hardcore Cure fans eat up this mopey, droney shit, but it wears out its welcome pretty quick for me...I guess I don't understand why they ended this beautiful, bright nightmare of an album on such a grey note...Not a bad song, just grates on me after awhile...

And there we have it...A messy, chaotic but ultimately rewarding journey....It definitely has its flaws but in most cases even its flaws are fascinating...This is one of those albums you can listen to over and over and you still have a hard time pin-pointing its ever-shifting colors...Don't buy into that "worst Cure album" bullshit...Save that for "Wild Moon Swings" or something...Like I said, we're still firmly entrenched in the classic Cure era here...

Here's "Caterpillar by the Cure...Enjoy....

The Cure: Japanese Whispers

The Cure: Japanese Whispers

1983

Fiction Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Let's Go to Bed  2. The Dream  3. Just One Kiss  4. The Upstairs Room  5. The Walk  6. Speak My Language  7. Lament  8. The Love Cats



Welcome to another exciting installment of "Before the Internet Existed":

 Before the internet existed I had to read every damn book in the library to find a single fact...And even then you weren't guaranteed an answer...Was a Xerus a real animal? I wasn't able to find an answer until the internet was invented...

 Before the internet existed there was no easy or convenient way to look at porn...These were your options:

1. You had to locate your Dad's/Friends' Dad's/Granfather's hidden stash of 1970's Playboys...

2. Randomly stumble across a water-damaged porno mag in the woods (boy, I hope that's water)...

3. Yank it to Red Sonja comics...

Before the internet existed there was no real way for non-Cure fanatics to know "Japanese Whispers" wasn't a proper Cure album...It's actually a collection of their three post-"Pornography" singles and b-sides...So when the goth kids tossed the new album on the turntable, a lot of them seemed aghast (boo!) at all the dance-pop present...To this day, it still has the stigma of being a pop trifle, but why is intelligent, well-crafted pop considered more trivial than foggy, droning atmospherics? Or is it all the keyboards? The role of guitar is waaaaayyyyy downplayed in favor of 80's synthesizer...As a result, I guess this could be considered a bit more "dated" sounding than say "Pornography" (which almost could have come out of any decade). But me? I love this stuff...Usually when I'm in the mood for the Cure I tend to pull one of the poppier albums from the shelf...This one being a particular favorite...


Readers Comments:

(showing 1 of 0):

Petey Pancakeface:  (5 seconds ago):"How can you possibly choose a piece of pop-shit like "Japanese Whispers" over a real Cure album like "Pornography" or "Disintegration"?  Why don't you give up this cock-gobbling blog and have a real Cure fan write a review? Dick biter!  -Signed, a Real Cure Fan...With pictures to prove it...(See diagrams below)...

 "We slip through the streets,
While everyone sleeps,
Getting bigger and sleeker,
And wider and brighter..."

"Mmmmmm...Not quite..."

"A little black haired girl,
Waiting for Saturday,
The death of her father pushing her,
Pushing her white face into the mirror,
Aching inside me..."

"There....You are now a real Cure fan..."

"Wowwww!"


.................................................................................................................

Yea, I don't buy into that shit...Anyway, this is what the album consists of...



"Let's Go to Bed/Just One Kiss" single:

1982:

"Let's Go to Bed" was a big turning point, showing that Robert was once again open to uptempo pop after the three dreary (but in a good way!) albums before it...He clearly sounds like he's rejuvenated at the possibilities of music again; reveling in "doo doo doo doo" backing vocals and  80's alt-dance rhythms, it's one of the catchiest things they've ever done...I wasn't especially around at the time, but I can just imagine this thing tearing up college radio and alternative dance nights, back in '82...

"Just One Kiss" reminds me of a funkier version of the dirge rock they'd perfected on their earlier albums...Sort of like "A Forest" but with a bit more of a shimmy in its hips...Not quite up to par with the A-side, but not chopped liver either...



"The Walk/The Upstairs Room/The Dream/Lament" ep:

1983:

"The Walk" is the most straight-up dance song the Cure ever laid down...Probably my least favorite of the three A-Sides present, but it's not a bad European-style rump-shaker...To me,  the electro-pop gem "The Upstairs Room," is the best of these B-Sides, and possibly even trumps "The Walk," as it tows the line between the darker material and their new pop direction more successfully...As soon as it sounds like it's going to erupt into a bright chorus, it mysteriously disappears back into the shadows...Compare this approach to "Lament," which is a complete throwback that sounds like it could have shambled in from church on the "Faith" album cover..."The Dream" has never done much for me...I find the slippery, blaring keyboards interesting while they're playing, but that's about it...

"Lovecats/Speak My Language" single:

1983"

"Lovecats"often gets slagged by the hardcore fans for being the fruitiest of fruity Cure songs, but damn my pop-lovin' heart, I love it!! My lord, that upright-bass tone is phenomenal, the hooks are relentless, and it's about cats!

 Any song about a cat is a good song...That's why my all-time favorite album is Poison's 1986 magnum opus, "Look What the Cat Dragged In"...

 

"Speak My Language," is the perfect B-Side for "Lovecats." It shares the same jazzy, new-wave sound and honestly, I like it even better than the A-Side...Hell, maybe my favorite song on "Japanese Whispers," its closest competition being "Let's Go to Bed"...I love how it doesn't beat you over the head with its hooks, but manages to worm its way into your ear-hole just the same...This single actually had an additional B-Side called "Mr Pink Eyes" that they didn't use for some reason...Even though the song's a little bonkers it would have helped fill out the running time a bit more, and added a little bit more fun...

Oh well...What's here is fantastic...If you're into the more pop-side of the Cure, this is a solid purchase...So let's check out "Speak My Language" by the Cure...Enjoy...