The Cure were never afraid of artistically defining themselves. They had their own sound, an eerie glamour surrounding a dark whimsicality, yet fans flocked to them...
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Normally speaking, a box set of nothing but B-sides and unreleased tracks would only be of interest to rabid fans, but the Cure have never really been a "normal" band. While...
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For a long time, maybe 15 years or so, Robert Smith rumbled about the Cure's imminent retirement whenever the band had a new album ready for release. Invariably, Smith said...
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One of two seminal albums, later packaged together as the ironically-titled double-LP Happily Ever After, that established the Cure's distinctly morose, depressing sound....
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It's hard to believe that the Cure could release an album even more sparse than Three Imaginary Boys, but here's the proof. The lineup change that saw funkstery bassist...
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This is the other one. As essential as Seventeen Seconds. Once packaged with the seriously dark, gloomy score from the band's pre-concert short film, Carnage...
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Certainly not the "darkest" the Cure would eventually get, Faith is, as represented by the cover art, one of the most "gray" records out there. Melancholy and despondent...
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Die-hard (no pun intended) Goths will insist that this, the Cure's most macabre and morbid release, is their best. But melody is too often sacrificed (again, no pun...
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Later hailed as one of the key goth rock albums of the '80s and considered by many hardcore Cure fans to be the band's best album, Pornography was largely dismissed upon its...
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Staring at the Sea: The Singles collects all of the Cure's biggest U.K. hits and best-known songs from the late '70s and early '80s. Spanning from "Killing an Arab" and...
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After the fallout both psychologically and physically of Pornography, it looked unlikely that anyone would hear from the Cure ever again. Surprisingly, from 1982-1983 Robert...
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A violent psychedelic apocalypse, a boiling-over stew of venom, ill-tuned violin screech, flailing guitar squawk and anguished caterwauling. One of the Cure's most radical...
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A breakthrough release, both commercially and artistically, with Middle Eastern rhythms, colorful splashes of psychedelia, Spanish guitar and quirky pop lightening up and...
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The Cure refocused and ultimately hit their stride with Head on the Door, producing an album which not only more effectively depicted gloom, but also showed enough pop...
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Starting with an at-once hilarious and enlightening archival home movie clip showing the band in its earliest days with its original lead singer at an open-air performance...
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A slightly shorter but not noticeably different version of the Paul Oakenfold mix of "Close to Me" from Mixed Up leads off this particular Cure EP. The hard-hitting,...
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The lead single in America from Disintegration, "Fascination Street" is a compelling example of the Cure at its considerable best. The single mix shortens the album cut...
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Either the highlight of Smith's abilities to turn out a massively catchy pop single or an annoying sell-out, depending on who one talks to, "Friday I'm in Love" is a jaunty,...
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The lead single from Wish is a sparkling little number -- while not the strongest of the band's singles, it's still a nice love lyric and performance from the band all...
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The Cure's High single really isn't all that remarkable, but that's not to say there's anything wrong with it. "High" is one of the high points on Wish, much the same as it...
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Disintegration's biggest pop hit, "Love Song" itself was written for Smith's wife Mary as a wedding gift; while the low-key arrangement may not seem immediately suited for a...
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Neck-and-neck with the Cure's early incarnation as wiry post-punks is this latter-day crowning achievement, a lavish, dizzyingly ambitious, orchestral opus that's incredibly...
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Expanding the latent arena rock sensibilities that peppered Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me by slowing them down and stretching them to the breaking point, the Cure reached the...
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Some may say this dance-remix album is ahead of its time, but most of these reconstructions are quite unnecessary--rarely improving upon, and at times all but ruining, the...
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An assortment of remixes, re-recordings, old singles, and one new song ("Never Enough"). Most of the remixes are quite radical, leaving only the bare bones of the original...
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Show featured mostly hit singles; Paris features the songs that built their cult, including "Close to Me" and "Letter to Elise." Consequently, most fans will find this the...
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A sub-par rehashing of the Disintegration formula. "A Letter To Elise" is practically a note-for-note copy of their hit "Pictures Of You." The only standout is the fluffy...
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On the surface, Wish sounds happier than Disintegration, and the sunny British Invasion hooks of the hit single "Friday I'm in Love" certainly seem to indicate that the...
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Concentrating on their recent, pop-oriented material, Show is a good, if unspectacular, representation of the Cure in concert. Only devoted fans need to own this album. ~...
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Though not without its charm, and certainly superior to 1992's Wish, this album's forays into flamenco and world music seem forced. Best moments are the sing-songy "Strange...
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Do you think Robert Smith chuckled at the irony when he titled his band1s 10th album? Despite musical-chairs lineups, the Cure1s emotional brooding has remained so...
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After the relatively straightforward pop of Wish, the Cure moved back toward stranger, edgier territory with Wild Mood Swings. Actually, that's only part of the truth. As...
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It's ironic that the Cure, a band whose albums have always seemed like definitive artistic statements, were at their best as a singles band. On the group's singles, Robert...
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Though not very representative of their mopey, gloomy-doomy signature style (except for the malicious "World War" and chilling "Subway Song"), this is taut, spartan punk-pop...
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Falling somewhere between official release and compilation, Boys Don't Cry was released in February 1980 in hopes to get the band exposure outside of the U.K.. It captures...
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Rarely thwarted by even their grandest ambitions, it seems that the more the Cure branch out, the more commercially accepted they are. Case in point: this overarching,...
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Simultaneously more accessible and ambitious than any of the Cure's previous albums, the double album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me finds Robert Smith expanding his pop...
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On this two-song single, the title track appears in a basic, straightforward "radio" mix. Given that the song itself is Cure-by-numbers, everything ends up sounding fairly...
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Compiling the various tracks from the UK singles for Gone!, Strange Attraction not only wisely returns to the one-single-only US format for Cure releases, but provides a...
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Quite why Elektra felt the need to follow the British example of two-part singles isn't exactly clear, but nonetheless that's what happened here: all the more frustrating...
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There's no question that "The 13th" was probably one of the Cure's most unexpected singles -- though horns had appeared on the single mix of "Close to Me" back in 1985, the...
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Maybe it was youthful exuberance or perhaps it was the fact that the band itself was not pulling all the strings, Three Imaginary Boys is not only a very strong debut, but a...
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Originally the first single from Disintegration in the U.K., but the third in America, "Lullaby" amusingly takes the arachnid scenario of "Boris the Spider" by the Who and...
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Taken directly from the Mixed Up album, "Never Enough" in the long version included here is an absolute monster of a track. Smith's coruscating, vicious funk guitar and the...
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Breaking the trend of releasing remixes that were simply straightforward extensions of the core tracks, here Smith fully turned over the reins to semi-regular studio...
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While the Side Show album was released in the U.K. and elsewhere as a two-disc set, in the U.S. it only appeared as an edited one-disc affair. The Stateside fans weren't...
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Though it was by no means the greatest John Peel session that the Cure ever recorded (that honor belongs to their 1981 airing), the band's debut on the show, in late 1978,...
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This 12" EP includes the Cure's unlikely dance hit "The Walk," along with the bouncy, whimsical "Upstairs Room" and "The Dream," plus the darker "La Ment" (which Robert...
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Unlike most other respectable '80s rock icons like Bono
and Morrissey, Robert Smith has maintained a fabulously high level of creativity and aesthetic quality. Over the...
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The Cure edged into new territory with Wild Mood Swings, but nevertheless drew scorn from certain quarters because it eschewed goth rock for pop, both pure and twisted. For...
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The Cure were never afraid of artistically defining themselves. They had their own sound, an eerie glamour surrounding a dark whimsicality, yet fans flocked to them...
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How to handle the B-sides, rarities, and sock-drawer discoveries? It's the dilemma of any band with an exhaustive series of reissues ahead of it. The results, no matter what...
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Part two of an unofficial trilogy that begins with 1980's Seventeen Seconds and ends with 1982's Pornography -- acknowledged as such by Rhino, who unloaded deluxe reissues...
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"First time available on CD" is often a way of putting a spin on words like "scraps" or "rubbish." This is the case with the second disc of Rhino's Pornography reissue. Like...
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Approximately five months after Rhino released the two-disc reissue of Three Imaginary Boys, the label gave Cure albums two through four -- 1980's Seventeen Seconds, 1981's...
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