This article originally appeared in Uncut Take 332 (December 2024)
“IT’S FUN TO SEE THEM STILL YOUNG”
ALAN SPARHAWK chooses the 1979 debut, THREE IMAGINARY BOYS
Those first few records really show The Cure realising the possibilities and then going deep, but Three Imaginary Boys was the doorway. When I first heard it, it would have been probably ’86, when I went first went to college. I searched out the very few wacky looking people there and this was the music they were listening to – a lot of New Order, and The Cure. I had heard them a little bit before, but then I dived in. In college, bands I was in even covered a couple of their songs – I know how to play “Boys Don’t Cry” and I was in a band that was learning “10:15 Saturday Night” too.
I like that Three Imaginary Boys is fragmented. They’re still a little bit all over the place – they can’t decide whether they’re Wire or Status Quo. There are still some rock clichés in there, like, “I’ve got no objection to you touching me there” [on “Object”], and elements they let slide over the next couple of records. Once you’re immersed in an artist, it’s fun to go look at the more fringe and early records, where they were trying to figure it out and were still trying on looks and ideas. For sure, this record is pretty deep with that. “10:15 Saturday Night” is a little proggy. “So What” is almost bar-punk or something!
“Three Imaginary Boys” is definitely throwing forward to Seventeen Seconds. I mean, “Foxy Lady”? Alright, that’s cool, but I can’t tell whether they’re being sarcastic, because it was punk and they were trying to grind against psychedelia and the foundation of stadium rock – ironically, seeing as they’re now the best stadium rock band out there. The Cure quickly became very serious, but it’s fun to see them still young and playing with it, and it still dawning on them what they have, and what could be.
“GLOOMY, ATMOSPHERIC… BEAUTIFUL”
On 1980’s SEVENTEEN SECONDS, The Cure find their true voice, says DEAN WAREHAM
The first album in the US was called Boys Don’t Cry, and that was the first Cure album I got. I sat down and tried to play some of the riffs from that record. I think of Seventeen Seconds as a pair with Faith, they sound and look similar. Where the debut was uptempo, funny and crisp, Seventeen Seconds is very different. He plugged his guitar into a Hammond organ, so he could play all the parts for the demos. It is really stripped down in terms of instrumentation, with minimal drum patterns, one guitar and maybe a keyboard playing a spooky melody.
It starts with “A Reflection” and it sounds as if you are stepping into a dystopian movie – it reminds me a little of Diamond Dogs. Then later you have “Play For Today” and “A Forest”, which are both beautiful gloomy songs with that slow atmospheric build. Robert Smith has said he was listening to Low, Nick Drake, Jimi Hendrix and Astral Weeks – and you hear none of that in this, but as an artist there can be a gap between what you are doing and what you think you are doing. Or maybe he was trying to throw people off the scent.
This would be the point where they went from post-punk into what became goth – it’s a gloomy and atmospheric album but very beautiful. It’s not a record where I paid much attention to the lyrics, they feel like part of the atmosphere – which is again very different to the debut, where the lyrics are very catchy. After I listened to this, I went out and bought a flanger pedal. I love Robert’s guitar playing and wentoff The Cure when they became more keyboard heavy, but I do love some later songs. I covered “Friday I’m In Love” and that was actuallyquitehard to sing, so it made me appreciate what a good singer he is. He has a deceptively wide range – I couldn’t do it the same way.
“BRITTLE BUT GLACIAL”
Into the gloom… Mogwai’s STUART BRAITHWAITE hymns 1981’s FAITH
Like a lot of people of my age, the first Cure album I really got into was the singles compilation, Standing On A Beach. My older sister was a huge Cure fan and I went through her records one by one. I always found Faith to have a unique atmosphere. It’s a very melancholy record, quite ambient and ethereal. I loved it and I love the fact that “All Cats Are Grey” is the only Cure song with no guitars on it – it’s one of my favourite songs. Faith has that analogue melancholy feel, like something from Side Two of Low with that eerie coldness. It has a very distinctive sound – brittle but glacial.
“The Funeral Party” is such a brilliant title for a Cure song, and it’s a great song, too. “Doubt” is one of the punkier songs and I think it had been around for a while, but now on Faith it sounds as if it can only exist within the context of that record. That’s what happens when you have known an album for a long time, you can’t imagine it being any different and that’s the sign of really brilliant album – you can’t imagine it not being exactly how it was. A lot of these songs shouldn’t work together. It’s like when you see The Cure today and a concert that has “The Walk” shouldn’t also have “Cold”, but because they do these very long shows, that allows them to explore the different perspectives of the music they have made.
After Faith, The Cure made Pornography and that is a brilliant record but it’s quite angry, almost harsh. Faith is more resigned. I love that about it, and I also love the fact they made it when they wereso young. Robert was writing about things most people of that age aren’t thinking about.
“IT HAS A CERTAIN LONGING”
How J MASCIS was comforted by 1982’s PORNOGRAPHY
I got into The Cure with “Boys Don’t Cry” on some punk compilation, then I got all their albums, I followed them. I really liked Pornography because it was a bit more depressing-sounding, a bit gloomy, it has a certain longing that was hitting my mood of teenage alienation at the time. It was getting more directly to the point with its dismal feeling. It’s probably their most fully realised depression session! Goth wasn’t quite a thing then, but that seems like an early goth record. It’s really reverby, but it’s also more rocking than their other albums, with a driving beat.
Robert Smith’s guitars have a washy sort of sound that encompasses you, and his voice has a great, pure tone. I related to the music. It made me feel, ‘Oh yeah, this is where I’m at, this guy somewhere out there’s feeling the same thing.’ It comforted me. “The Figurehead” into “A Strange Day” was a great one-two punch, and “A Strange Day” became my favourite Cure song. It’s perfect with its construction, the way it builds up then there’s a guitar breakdown then everything comes back in, and its emotion at the overall sadness of life. One day is strange, and many days are strange – it speaks to something in me.
The Cure certainly fed into Dinosaur. I was fairly unapologetically antisocial, so I had the record player next to the bed, and I would lie in bed and listen to it. It seemed crazy to me that they made an album like Pornography and somehow they pushed through to be so big, it’s pretty wild. We played with them at the Rose Bowl stadium in LA, and there was a pretty bad earthquake, with stuff falling off the hotel walls, and I heard they got freaked and went home. I just went back to bed!
The Cure still seem like the band that made Pornography, it’s all coming out of Robert Smith’s head. He’s a great songwriter, singer and guitar-player, you can hear his conviction and the way that moves through so many of his songs.
“THEY TOOK RISKS”
Slowdive’s RACHEL GOSWELL on the “wild mix” of 1987’s KISS ME KISS ME KISS ME
The first Cure record I remember hearing was Pornography through the bedroom walls when I was about 12 – my older brother was a huge Cure fan. I was 16 when Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me came out and I went to see them at Wembley with my brother, three rows from the front. I still remember my giddy excitement.
I was the only goth in the village and music was my salvation. The whole aesthetic of The Cure really resonated. I found something in their music that was comforting. This album has such a wild mix, from upbeat pop songs and then songs like “The Kiss” or “Like Cockatoos”. There is real dark and light on this record and as The Cure became more established they took more risks. They did things on their own terms. Slowdive are the same. It’s pretty obvious through our love of lush guitars that The Cure have influenced our sound, and we are all huge Cure fans.
Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me jumps all over the place but then there is “Just Like Heaven”, which is the perfect song. When we did shows with them in South America, it feels like everybody is waiting for “Just Like Heaven”. It’s euphoric, a great song for a singalong. I always loved “Like Cockatoos” because the instrumentation is quite different to everything else and “Fight” is a great ending song, which despite the title is very hopeful.
He played new songs in South America and the one about his brother was gut-wrenching. Everybody who has lost something can relate to it. I am in the last third of my life and you start to lose people you really love. You can’t fathom it until you go through it, and then the pain never really goes away. He’s a bit like Nick Cave, an artist who has opened himself up and given more of himself to his fans. It’s quite remarkable.
“SENSITIVE AND GENUINE”
THURSTON MOORE salutes 1989’s “significant” DISINTEGRATION
It’s such a significant LP for that era, because it brought in this really artful take on isolationism. There were a lot of people coming of age at that time who felt Robert’s voice was dignifying something that was really hard to articulate. It wasn’t just rage, it wasn’t just perversity, it wasn’t just punk – it was really sensitive and genuine. It’s a bit of a harrowing record for young listeners to process, but it’s beautiful.
His great strength is the way he performs this truth of a world where, historically, a male is supposed to suppress emotions. His performance can be a little polarising because people can realise the truth of it, or they can make fun of it, the way I’ve seen other male performers do. But I think most see it as this really brave performance. I always have.
He always struck me as such an interesting figure on stage, even when he was playing in Siouxsie & The Banshees. There was a certain… I don’t know if fragility is the right word, but there was a sense that he was in a place that was possibly more than the music he was playing. It wasn’t just fun and games.
My only interaction with him was at some point in the ’90s, at an event in New York City that had something to do with David Bowie. I noticed that he was in the room for a second and then he wasn’t. I remember going in search of the loo and I saw him sitting in the corner with a friend or two, away from the madness. He’s certainly not a social butterfly, is he? But at the same time he was dressed as Robert Smith, he struck the most striking figure. I felt a sense that there’s a shy boy inside, but at the same time he’s able to coexist with this performative figure that he’s created.
“POST-PUNK STRANGENESS”
CHVRCHES singer and Cure collaborator LAUREN MAYBERRY celebrates 2000’s BLOODFLOWERS
A friend made me a mix CD with “Fire In Cairo”. I knew “Boys Don’t Cry” and I got into their music through the greatest hits collection. Then when I began playing in bands, I noticed that every guy in a semi-decent band had a Disintegration T-shirt, so I realised that must be the real shit. I got into that and Pornography. That’s what I loved about The Cure, that they could exist in the two different worlds. Their melodies are fantastic, great pop songs, but then there would be long songs of post-punk strangeness. When we started CHVRCHES we talked about The Cure, Eurythmics and Depeche Mode – bands that could make really weird albums that had these accessible moments.
Bloodflowers came out when I was a teenager. The Cure are about atmosphere and the way imagery is very consistent across the record. Robert is very good at building an aesthetic world within each record, and this one has a lot of songs about the natural world. One of my favourite things about The Cure is that each instrument has its own moment in each song. It’s not bringing in everything at the same time, it’s about showing patience and craft. Robert is also one of my favourite guitar players and I spent an awful lot of time trying to emulate that sound.
These days, everybody is excited that they are still making music, but in 2000 I bet there was a lot of snobby criticism that The Cure still sounded like The Cure. It just shows that you should listen to your gut. Robert has never really chased the zeitgeist. People might have wanted The Cure to ‘modernise’, but they were already timeless.
Read more about The Cure in Uncut’s Ultimate Genre Guide to Goth, available here