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The Cure “Three Imaginary Boys”

sfilzen — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 17:20:10 +0000

The Cure “Three Imaginary Boys” 1979. Fiction Records. Yesterday, April 21st, was Robert Smith’s 65th birthday (b. 1959). Three Imaginary Boys was the band’s debut LP, a no-frills post-punk guitar-driven masterpiece released only the UK. Boys Don’t Cry, a sort-of comp, was released in the US, Canada and Australia in 1980 and most of the same tracks in a different order. That record adds the single “Boys Don’t Cry” and drops the Cure’s Devo-esque Jimi Hendrix cover of “Foxy Lady” that features Cure bassist Michael Dempsey on vocals. Supposedly that track was not supposed to be on Three Imaginary Boys at all; it was added by producer Chris Parry.

I really love this entire album but my favorite tracks are “10.15 Saturday Night” with the tap drip drip drip dripping; it was the B-side to their single “Killing an Arab.” Also great is the boppy rhythm of “Accuracy,” the frenetic pop energy of “Grinding Halt,” the buzzy Buzzcocky snark of “Object,” and the way “Fire in Cairo” taught me to spell Cairo in a lilting singsong fashion. The best track is the album’s title track “Three Imaginary Boys” which portends the direction The Cure would take: a goth-pop sound that borders on sinister but is still kinda danceable.

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The Cure “Pictures of You”

sfilzen — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 16:13:12 +0000

The Cure “Pictures of You” 1990. Fiction Records, 12″ single. “Pictures of You” was The Cure’s final single from their 1989 album Disintegration. It’s painful and beautiful (apparently written by Robert Smith after a house fire; the single’s sleeve is a photo of his wife that he was able to salvage), this 12″ has the Extended Remix (by Bryan “Chuck” New), the regular-length version went to #27 in the UK and #71 in the US. The B-side includes live versions of “Last Dance” and “Fascination Street,” recorded at Wembley in July ‘89. I love both of those tracks from Disintegration, too: both lush, melancholy and gorgeous.

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The Cure “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me”

sfilzen — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 21:54:44 +0000

The Cure “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me” 1987. Fiction Records. Today, April 21st, is Robert Smith’s birthday (b. 1959) so I’m taking The Cure’s 7th studio LP out for a spin. This copy is a relatively new reissue (remastered by Robert Smith); I got my original copy of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me on cd, one of the first cd’s I ever bought actually, back in ‘87. It went to #35 in the US (their highest chart position to that point) and to #6 in the UK. There’s a lot of great tracks on it, but I think they veered too far into pop for a chunk of it and it is one of my least-played Cure albums in my collection – though in ‘87 I was moving toward harder punk so that probably has a lot to do with it. I like the gothy, swirly, psychedelically exotic tracks the best, like “The Kiss,” “Torture,” “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep,” the epic “Snakepit” and “All I Want,” that are reminiscent of their earlier material. But with Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, The Cure broke through to the American mainstream with highly pop-orientated and somewhat jazzy singles like “Why Can’t I Be You?” (#54 US, #21 UK), “Just Like Heaven” (#40 US, #29 UK) and “Hot! Hot! Hot!” (#68 US, #45 UK) which are tracks that I’m not that crazy about (in reference to other Cure songs: compared to a lot of other stuff they’re pretty great). The single “Catch” (#27 UK) was not released in the US and listening to, it’s pretty obvious why – it’s not very pop at all: super-emo with an alt-violin up front and center (that same violin pops up again in “How Beautiful You Are…”).

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The Cure “Charlotte Sometimes”

sfilzen — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 13:12:44 +0000

The Cure “Charlotte Sometimes” 1981. 12″ single, Fiction Records. The Cure released “Charlotte Sometimes” as a non-album single about six months after the Faith LP and it went to #44 in the UK. The Cure included it on their 1986 comp Staring at the Sea: The Singles, an album that I listened to rather incessantly in the 80′s (this 12″ is a very recent acquisition, picked up at record store in London). Robert Smith’s inspiration for the song was the “children’s novel by English writer Penelope Farmer, published in 1969. According to Smith: ‘There have been a lot of literary influences through the years; ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ was a very straight lift.’ Many lines in the song reflect lines directly from the book, such as ‘All the faces/All the voices blur/Change to one face/Change to one voice’ from the song, compared to the first sentence of the book, ‘By bedtime all the faces, the voices, had blurred for Charlotte to one face, one voice.’. The song continues: ‘Prepare yourself for bed/The light seems bright/And glares on white walls,’ and the book continues, ‘She prepared herself for bed… The light seemed too bright for them, glaring on white walls’. The title of the single’s B-side, “Splintered in Her Head”, was also taken from a line in the novel. The Cure later released another song based on the novel, ‘The Empty World,’ from their 1984 album The Top.” [Wiki] “Charlotte Sometimes” is a great representation of my favorite Cure music: the early stuff. Rich, dark and gothic. Swirly. Mysterious. “Splintered in Her Head” is also dark, but more ominous with whispers of industrial goth. On the 12″ single, both of those tracks appear on the A side; side B is a very long live version of “Faith” which The Cure recorded in Australia in 1981.

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The Cure “Japanese Whispers”

sfilzen — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 21:16:00 +0000

The Cure “Japanese Whispers” released 35 years ago today, December 6th, 1983. Fiction Records. Japanese Whispers: The Cure Singles Nov 82: Nov 83 is an early best-of comp of Cure hit non-album singles and b-sides. The singles included are, of course, great: “Let’s Go to Bed” (from late ‘82, it went to #44 in the UK), “The Walk” (released mid-’83, it was The Cure’s first Top 20 hit in the UK, making it to #12, it’s also my favorite single on Japanese Whispers), and “The Lovecats” (from October ‘83, their first Top 10 which went to #7 in the UK). But really, my favorite tracks are not the singles, but the less well-know songs, most especially the mysteriously lushly gothic tracks like “The Dream” (the b-side to “The Walk”), “Just One Kiss” (the b-side to “Let’s Go to Bed”) and “Lament” (on the 12″ version of “The Walk”) as well as the brush-drum jazzy swing number “Speak My Language” (aptly, the b-side to the similar styled “The Lovecats”).

Allmusic writes about Japanese Whispers, “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 Smith and (now keyboardist) Lol Tolhurst put out some of the catchiest singles of their career. “Let’s Go to Bed,” “The Walk,” and “The Lovecats” were not only singles that got the Cure radio play and made them a household name, but more importantly marked the next phase in the music of the Cure, which would reach its peak with albums like Head on the Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Dropping the stripped-down darkness of Faith and Pornography, the songs on Japanese Whispers (the aforementioned singles from that era, including all the B-sides) are light, dancy, and at times jazzy. Adding new keyboard sounds, old-timey percussion, standup bass, and some damn silly lyrics rejuvenated Robert Smith and sent him on a course that would cement his role as one of the most interesting musicians to emerge from the ‘80s underground. Japanese Whispers is one of those rare releases when a singles collection works just as well as a standard-issue album.”

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The Cure “The Love Cats”

sfilzen — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 15:25:26 +0000

The Cure “The Love Cats” 1983. 12″ single, Fiction Records/Sire Records. I’m spinning this ode to loving cats on today, August 8th, which I guess is International Cat Day (established by the International Fund for Animal Welfare in 2002) – though any cat would tell you, if they could, that EVERY day is cat day. The jazzy extended version of “The Love Cats” appears on this 12″single, the single version was released as a stand-alone in ‘83 and it reached #7 in the UK; The Cure included it first on their comp LP Japanese Whispers released later that year and then again in ‘86 on Standing on the Beach: The Singles. Side B has “Speak My Language” (also included on Japanese Whispers) is, like “Love Cats,” a swinging, vaguely noir jazzy number, and “Mr. Pink Eyes,” which only shows up on later comps of rarities and b-sides and is a frantically upbeat cacophony of free-jazz piano and post-punk experimentation. I think our copy of this 12″ has a messed-up B-side: on 45 rpm Robert Smith sounds just wrong, way too high in the vocals as compared to the links provided here but at 33 rpm the music is way too slow and low. Anyway, I’ll be celebrating International Cat Day by listening to “The Love Cats” and giving these boys (Mr. Pocket in the foreground, Mr. Pants in back) my love.

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The Cure “Boys Don’t Cry”

sfilzen — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 17:10:10 +0000

The Cure “Boys Don’t Cry” released on this date, February 5th, 1980 in the UK. Fiction Records/PVC Records. The US version was released in August of 1980, both as an alternate version of the band’s 1979 debut album Three Imaginary Boys with a slightly different track list. The record falls in a grey area between an official release and a compilation record.

Boys Don’t Cry includes three singles not on Three Imaginary Boys: “Killing an Arab,“ ”Boys Don’t Cry“ and ”Jumping Someone Else’s Train.” Tracks that overlap are “10:15 Saturday Night,” “Accuracy,” “Grinding Halt,” “Subway Song,” and, one of my favorite Cure songs, the beautifully haunting “Three Imaginary Boys.” Allmusic reviewer Chris True describes this time in The Cure’s recording catalog as “More poppy and representative of the times” and “a semi-detached bit of late-‘70s English pop-punk, angular and lyrically abstract..utter simplicity.”

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