Speaking of gaps in my collection…before a few weeks ago, I’m not sure I ever intentionally listened to a single Depeche Mode song. Yes, I know this was a foolish move on my part. Yes, I know they’re regarded as one of the best bands of all time, casting a long shadow on pop culture that stretches from Marilyn Manson to Johnny Cash and beyond.
Fully aware of the huge mistake I had spent my life making, I bought Violator without hearing anything beyond the singles. It was a great decision.
As a music reviewer, my inbox is constantly bombarded with press packs. The unfortunate truth is that most of this goes ignored, buried amid the insurmountable pile of album streams and press releases.
But every once in a while, something will leap from the murky stream of promos and glisten like an iridescent marlin in the sun, catching my attention and holding it. A couple years ago, one of those records was Horizons, the sophomore record of Seattle’s Fotoform, a shining bit of post-punky shoegaze that’s as emotionally stirring as it is urgent.
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.
For as ubiquitous as they are in pop culture, it’s almost a shock to remember that they only released two studio albums. Their trademark sound, marked by melodic basslines, robotic drums, stabbing guitars, and Ian Curtis’ distinct baritone drew up most of the post punk blue print, but they also had a huge impact on new wave, goth rock, and indie rock (as nebulous as that term is, it’s impossible to listen to bands like The National, Arcade Fire, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem, etc and not hear shades of Joy Division).
And while Substance is best celebrated for “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” their only Platinum single, this compilation serves as a career-spanning chronicle of one of the most important bands in pop music history.
If you were looking at the resumés of the members of In Parallel to try to discern what they might sound like, you might be thrown for a loop. Sure, there might be enough shoegaze and post-punk devotion in Hopesfall and Celebrity’s catalogs that it would make sense, but you might expect Broken Codes to have some of their sharper edges as well.
But listening to the gauzy haze of guitars, drum machines, and syrupy smooth vocals, it’s hard to wish it was any grittier. This is the kind of trancelike, dreamy rock that is best consumed by letting it wash over you.
It’s taken me until my mid-30s to realize something that should have been obvious: the Cure really is one of the best bands in the world. Yet approaching their immense discography now, and not as a teenager when I no doubt would have spun their albums on repeat, has proven to be a daunting task.
Of course, I’ve loved Disintegration for a few years now, but sorting through the rest of it, I feel rudderless in a sea of gothy pop songs. Recently, I decided almost on a whim to order a copy of Pornography, their fourth record, and one of their darkest.
And it’s appropriately titled: like pornography, this record is almost exploitatively intimate, often uncomfortable, yet basely alluring.
Last year, I said that An Autumn for Crippled Children’s Try Not to Destroy Everything You Love should have stolen them the title of “The Cure of Heavy Metal” from post metallurgists A Year of No Light. That album’s heavy use of moody synths, drum machines, and melodramatic grand pianos betrayed a great love for the Goth Rock legends that mixed surprisingly well with the blistering black metal guitars and shrieked vocals.
On last year’s All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet, AAFCC leaned even further into the goth, new wave, and post punk influence, making this sound almost like a Cure-worship album with added black metal elements, rather than the other way around. In either case, it certainly works.