When Punk exploded in 1977, the dam burst so hard it left a crater. It didn’t take very long for the maelstrom of no-frills sonic intensity to suck up other elements. Post-punk emerged almost immediately, deconstructing punk into unrecognizable shapes. Post-punk in turn splintered into its own series of subgenres—most notably, new wave and gothic rock.
Genre taxonomy is an inexact science, and no one is totally sure who laid goth rock’s first brick. But Bauhaus is a darn good guess.
There’s never been another band quite like Cocteau Twins. Not before, not since. Still, for all of their idiosyncrasies and obscurity, they cast a long shadow. Their influence can be heard in bands like Sigur Ros, My Bloody Valentine, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins, and the legions of acts that those bands influenced.
But Cocteau Twins didn’t become Cocteau Twins™ out of the gate. The ethereal dream pop giants cut their teeth in the post punk and goth scene of the early ’80s before becoming untethered in the clouds (Elizabeth Fraser notably has a Siouxsie and the Banshees tattoo on one arm). And while their debut Garlands received plenty of praise in the post punk scene, Head Over Heels is where they start to pupate into something entirely unique.
I usually don’t put much stock in compilations. Most of them are cash grabs aimed at casual fans, and as someone who prefers to listen to songs in the context of their album, they offer little value to me.
There are, however, some exceptions. For instance, if a band has released a significant number of non-album singles—especially if those singles were as formative to the band’s career as The Cure’s non-album singles were.
While Standing On a Beach was, in fact, intended to introduce American fans to the Cure’s back catalog after the success of The Head on the Door, it remains the best collection of the singles that had a huge impact on their career despite never appearing on an album—even more than Japanese Whispers or 2001’s Greatest Hits, making it an essential bit of Cure history.
Here’s the big wrinkle in my personal journey as a Cure fan. I’ve spent several of the last posts talking about how I’d mostly ignored the legendary group until recently, barring a few attempts to familiarize myself with their more celebrated records.
Except that I’ve owned a CD copy of their self-titled record since the mid 2000s. At one point, I even owned the maxi CD single for “alt.end,” which includes the excellent B-side “Why Can’t I Be Me?”
As many people have pointed out, though, this album is maybe the least representative thing they’ve put out, sticking out like a raucous sore thumb in their decidedly less noisy catalog, which makes the decision to christen it with their own name curious. But buried beneath the aggressive performances and in-your-face production is a collection of songs that showcase everything that makes the Cure the Cure.
Everyone has to start somewhere. For the Cure, that somewhere was Three Imaginary Boys, a charming if inauspicious collection of Buzzcocks-y songs that was more Pablo Honey than Are You Experienced, even if they did sneak the world’s weirdest Jimi Hendrix song onto it. The release was largely ignored until the later single “Boys Don’t Cry,” after which their debut was rereleased with a different track listing that included that hit.
But then two important things happened. First, the Cure toured with labelmates and goth pioneers Siouxsie and the Banshees, for whom Robert Smith even filled in on guitar after their guitarist quit midtour.
Second, they added bassist Simon Gallup to the band. While bassists are often overlooked, Gallup brought a brooding drive to the band’s rhythm section that would go on to be a major part of the group’s sound, and was a big part of why this is the first record in the group’s catalog where the Cure starts to feel like the Cure™.
Let me start by explaining that my recent Cure obsession isn’t totally aimless: my podcast cohost and I decided to take an episode to do a deep dive through the legendary Goths’ discography—a daunting task for anyone, but especially for someone who had largely ignored their legacy for most of their life (namely, me).
While I’d already spent a decent amount of time with some of their most celebrated releases, I set off to familiarize myself with everything I was unfamiliar with. I’ve spent the last couple weeks binging their albums, reading Wikipedia and album reviews like I was cramming for college finals, and filling in the gaps in my Cure collection.
One thing that I learned during this time is that usually, the general consensus about each Cure album is mostly trustworthy. If an album is good, everyone says it’s good. If it’s bad, everyone says it’s bad.
But there is one blindingly glaring exception to that rule: 2000s Bloodflowers, a brilliant and understated record that is almost universally maligned. And while I’ll admit that its artwork does it no favors, this is one case where the collective music historian consciousness is very mistaken.
“I never quite said what I wanted to say to you,” mumbles Robert Smith in the closing moments of Disintegration, and those words might as well be about my original post about this record.
Because I’ve been listening to a lot of the Cure lately. Actually, that’s probably an understatement. In the last two weeks, I’ve listened to almost nothing else. I’ve listened to each record in their discography at least once, purchased many, and revisited the ones already in my collection multiple times.
Part of this is because my wife is on vacation with our baby and there’s no better soundtrack for an empty house, but the much larger part is that there’s maybe no other band that has had such a far-reaching influence or massive impact without ever compromising or contradicting themselves.
And while I’ve reviewed the several new Cure records in my collection over the last week, I need to come back to their perennial classic, Disintegration. I wrote a post on this record when I got it six years ago, but I’m compelled to make another, because friends, I have a lot to say about this record.
If there’s one thing Robert Smith hates, it’s being pigeonholed. After releasing a gloomy trio of goth rock classics in the early part of the decade, Smith began to feel like his band was misunderstood as producers of monochromatic dourness. With a slightly shifted lineup, they released a trio of standalone pop singles that shattered the conception that they were one note.
And while that same pop perfection failed to infiltrate their following album, The Top, their 1985 record The Head on the Door was a masterpiece of hook-laden pop songs that didn’t forsake their mastery of dark atmospheres.
As it turns out, my mid-thirties aren’t too late for my first Cure phase. And friends, this phase is deep, and I have no recourse against the urge to fill in the gaps in my collection for one of the deepest and most rewarding discographies of all time.
Just like Rome though, the Cure wasn’t built in a day. It took a few releases for them to find their own voice. But Faith, their third record, is where the spectral, teased-hair silhouette of their legacy started to take shape, introducing gossamer atmospheres and dirgelike tempos to their increasingly dark post punk. And while it’s still massively indebted to bands like Joy Division, Television, and Siouxsie and the Banshees (who Robert Smith would briefly play guitar for later), it’s the clearest picture of The Cure to come they had yet released.
When I first heard Disintegration, which I bought on reputation alone, I lamented that I didn’t get into the Cure when I was a teenager. My thirties were too late to start a Cure phase—too late for the gloomy goth rockers to sink their hooks into my soul as deeply as they were meant to be (I even blamed my very 80s child mother for not exposing me to them).
Then, I had a child, and at six months old, she is certainly not too young for a Cure phase. As we’ve tried different strategies to get her to sleep, we’ve discovered that the most reliable tool is the Rockabye Baby series’ collection of Cure lullabies. And as those delightfully sweet arrangements have played on repeat in our house the last few weeks, I’ve found myself obsessing over the Cure with the same earnestness I thought I had missed out on by getting into them later.
That new obsession has gotten me to finally check out Wish, which I had assumed for years was an unabashed pop backlash to the dirge of Disintegration, based solely on the sugary hit “Friday I’m In Love.”
Boy, was I wrong.