Forty Five Minutes Of The Cure

The Cure's late 2024/ late career album Songs Of a Lost World is very much a gift that keeps giving and the recent televised gigs plus an hour of The Cure at the BBC had me going back to the band's music. That meant a Sunday mix was going to happen sooner or later and here it is, a selection centred around some of the best pop/ indie/ goth singles of the 1980s along with a few remixes and album tracks. Looking at the tracklist you might think that I've gone for some of the obvious choices- and you'd be right, I have- but there's a nice ebb and flow to it. A Cure Mix of deeper cuts might need to follow at some point in the future. I said recently that their music has meant more to me as time has gone on, and the way that Robert Smith has kept the band's integrity intact, and the quality of songs and albums so high, should be an inspiration to others about how to do it, how to grow old with your credibility and dignity in one piece. He stands up against immoral ticketing practices too, something some heritage rock acts should take note of. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The Cure

• Alone
• Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)
• Shiver And Shake
• In Between Days
• The Caterpillar
• Lullaby
• Fascination Street (Extended Mix)
• A Forest
• Just Like Heaven

Alone came out at the end of September this year ahead of the album Songs Of A Lost World, a majestic crawl through Smithworld, the first new Cure song for sixteen years and one which delivers on all promises. Seven minutes long, the first half all glacial synths, Simon Gallup's bass and crashing drums and then at last, Robert Smith comes in with the line, 'this is the end of every song we sing', a heck of a way to announce your comeback. The album deals with endings, mortality, human frailties, loss- now all experienced for real as life has taken its toll. 

Pictures Of You came out in March 1990, a gloriously melancholic song that I find incredibly moving, especially since Isaac died. It was also on Mixed Up, a 1990 remix album, four sides of vinyl, that shifted The Cure's songs into the brave new world of the 1990s. The eight minute extended version of Fascination Street was also on Mixed Up and previously came out on the 12" of that single the year before, a nine minute recreation of a raucous band night out in New Orleans in 1985.

Shiver And Shake was on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, the band's 1987 double album that saw them spread out musically and thematically- Velvets inspired rock, post punk pop, some goth gloom and some of the sunny South of France (where it was recorded) breaking through too. Shiver And Shake is spiteful, gnarly, fast paced proto- grunge/ rock- 'You're a waste of time/ You're just a babbling face'- that grinds away as Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me's penultimate song. The song that closes this mix is Just Like Heaven, sublime indie- pop, that nestles inside the centre of Kiss Me, a moment of sheer joy. 

In Between Days was a 1985 single. What is there to say about it? Superlative breezy mid- 80s pop, with hyperactive acoustic guitars, New Order- esque bass, and hooks aplenty. 

The Caterpillar is a wiggy, psychedelic single from 1984, a funny little song from the band when they were still a three piece.

Lullaby was a 1989 single, a creeped out goth rock single from a time when the indie rock world was transforming from the mid- 80s indie scene into something else, something more confident, more colourful. Robert Smith's spindly nightmare/ catchy but slightly disconcerting pop song might have seemed a bit out of place or out of time. Plucked violins, a whispered vocal about spiders- a top ten hit, obviously. 

A Forest was The Cure's debut single from way back in 1980, a definitive early 80s post- punk song and one of The Cure's best moments. Shimmering, primordial gloom with the bass driving it forwards a Bob sings of existential dread/ a walk in the woods.