Curepedia: Author Q&A with DJ Set – Ballina Fringe Festival

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Interview with Simon Price – Part 2

 Article for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Interview with Simon Price – Part 1

Article for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Curepedia – Simon Price – Book Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Goth – A History by Lol Tolhurst – Book Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

John Robb – The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth – Book Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

The Cure - Wish

By 1992, The Cure were beginning to feel very 1980s, along had come 'Madchester', shoegaze and grunge, not to mention the rave scene.  Certainly by the time Wish, their ninth album was released not many of us were even thinking about Robert Smith and co. What is evident from first track Open is The Cure had amped up the guitars, they 'rock' a little more, but in a 'Cure-like' way.  High sees them on more familiar ground, a hummable, breezy tune. We also get the more immersive, glacial songs like Apart, which has wonderfully downbeat guitar lines you can just sink into, with the gorgeous, simple lyric "how did we get so far apart, we used to be so close together".  Later in the album, Trust and To Wish Impossible Things.

From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea has a bit of Stones and a bit of goth thrown together to make something that is, at seven and a half minutes, a bit much to be honest.  Wendy Time is a little 'quirky-Cure-by-numbers', not that there's anything wrong with that but it just feels like Smith could do this in his sleep.  Very hard to know what to say about Friday I'm In Love at this stage, but it seemed to press a lot of Cure buttons back in 1992 and is probably one of their most synonymous songs, and indeed casual fans would be hard pushed to name any more recent Cure songs.

Letter to Elise is an almost perfect distillation of Pictures of you, it would almost seem like a ripoff except that it's just so soothing, thanks mainly to some absolutely awesome guitar work.  In fact this could well be The Cure's guitar album. End is the last track, drenched in guitars it bookends the album nicely. While by no means a classic Cure album, there are enough good songs to carry this one through, so if you like this sort of thing, there's plenty to enjoy here.

Album Review: The Cure - Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don’t Cry was a sort of reworked version of The Cure’s debut album Three Imaginary Boys, and was released in early 1980.  It takes many of the better tracks from the debut and adds their first three excellent singles from 1979.  The packaging, like the music within, is quite rough and ready, with charmingly cheap looking artwork.

 

Unlike the material that followed, this album bristles with nervous, jerky energy.  Opening with the title track, which is possibly THE quintessential Cure song, and needs little description here.  10.15 Saturday Night oscillates between gentle, barely there guitar strumming and heavier guitar stabs, leading into Robert Smith’s searing guitar solo.  It’s probably best to avoid discussion of the emo-inventing “drip, drip, drip...” lyrics which don’t really stand up to scrutiny.  Jumping Someone Else’s Train and later Fire In Cairo are bouncy tracks with great melodies which rattle by pleasingly.

 

Debut single Killing An Arab, HEAVILY influenced by Camus has a vaguely Middle Eastern guitar riff and a hefty dose of attitude.  Later on the album, slower tracks such as Another Day and Three Imaginary Boys are moodier, wallowing tracks signposting the band’s direction on subsequent albums.  It’s an essential document of The Cure’s very early days.

Album Review: The Cure – Bloodflowers

The Cure took 4 years to follow up their weakest album Wild Mood Swings.  Here the mood swung towards gloom with 2000’s Bloodflowers.  Billed as the third in a trilogy incorporating 1982’s P0rn0gr@phy and 1989’s Disintegration, it was clear that no Love Cats or In Between Days would be found here.  The band set the bar high by referencing two of their classic albums.

In the main, the album doesn’t disappoint.  There are no real standout tracks.  What we have instead are lengthy, unhurried tracks featuring Robert Smith’s guitar prominently and some bleak lyrics.  It opens with Out of This World, which sets the tone for the album as Smith wearily sings lines like “we always have to go back to real lives” over sighing guitars and some almost chirpy keyboards.

Watching Me Fall is a full-on descent into darkness and despite some fine guitar, is the most overblown moment on the album at eleven minutes, matched only by Smith’s wail against the offset of old age on 39 (“the fire is almost out”).  But the prevailing mood on the album is not darkness, more a sort of wistful gloom over almost interchangeable tracks like Where The Birds Always Sing, Maybe Someday and The Last Day of Summer, all strummed guitars and washes of keyboards.

Doomed romance rears its ugly head in There Is No If… as Smith sings of “remember the first time I told you I love you, it was raining hard”… and “‘if you die’ you said, ‘so do I’ you said” over impossibly pretty guitars.  The Loudest Sound incorporates a trip-hop beat which remarkably doesn’t ruin the song, allowing Robert Smith to contribute some fine guitar lines.

In keeping with Cure tradition, proceedings are brought to a close with the title track, seven and a half minutes of descending guitars as only the Cure can quite pull off as Smith wails “these flowers will never die”.

The album captures an autumnal mood remarkably well, though avoid like the plague if you only like the Cure’s singles.

In Defence of the CD

A lot has been written recently about the demise of the CD and talking about what an unloved format it really is.

I started buying music on vinyl. Mostly albums, never had much time for singles. I liked the large sleeves with the intricate artwork, but buying records in Dublin was an experience fraught with uncertainty. Assuming the shop put the right record into the sleeve (this did actually happen several times), there was always the chance of some slight damage. This then played havoc with the family record player, which I was allowed use sparingly. Was always handier to immediately tape the album. Though there was nothing like the status attached to a Freebird Records bag (great Dublin record shop), always the bag of choice when loaning out a record.

Amongst my peers there was a culture of taping records for people. I was unwilling to buy The Cure’s album Pornography myself as the drama it would have caused at home wouldn’t have been worth it. One of my classmates had it. He was dubious about my ‘Cure-credentials’ but eventually relented. Imagine my surprise when I got the tape home to hear Glenn Miller!

It got to the stage where I graduated to just buying tapes. They were portable and handy for me, being the owner of a tape recorder where much of my formative listening was done and then also a walkman. The problem with this was the fast forward and rewind element, alien to many under 30s! To skip the dodgier tracks, you had to fast-forward the tape and guess when the next song would start. A skill perfected by many but lethal for walkman batteries. And with purchased tapes there was always the situation where both sides of a tape were of unequal length, so you invariably had to fast-forward one side or another. Though it did make you actually listen to a whole album, rather than skipping around, mainly due to my laziness in fast-forwarding!

There was also the tape eating that went on with tape recorders. Basically tape recorders would chew up a tape randomly, in the middle of playing it. There was no particular genre my tape player liked more than others, though it liked a bit of goth now and then. Repairing a tape was a real science. Invariably the tape would have snapped so it was a case of unravelling the tape from the player, smoothing out gently and surgically applying some sellotape to the underside of the tape. A skill at which I became adept.

Towards the end of the 80s, compact discs (CDs) started to appear in Irish record shops. At this stage we had only one CD player in the house, purchased at huge cost. CDs were a good bit more expensive than records and tapes at first. They were supposedly indestructible, though as most people know, they scratch just as easily as records or anything else. And the smaller format meant reduced size artwork inside a plastic box, which are irritating in that it’s incredibly easy to break the little hinges which holds the package together.

Some bands used the new format to their advantage. Artwork has involved into little booklets, which can offer contain an array of images, photographs, lyrics etc. Though many avoid the plastic cases and produce a cardboard digipack. These work well as long as they avoid taking a big drink (!), something from which they never recover. The rounded edge CD cases look awful though, no time for those!

The beauty of a CD is, apart from the digital sound, is the ease and convenience with which they can be used. Skipping from song to song is taken for granted now but was revolutionary for those of us used to tapes. Works really well when you are playing DJ while having a few drinks, though the aftermath can often consist of a carpet of CDs and open boxes! CDs can also hold up to 80 minutes of music, which usually means more tracks and more value for your money.

But the real plus with CDs is a convenient physical package. I can’t warm to mp3 files, they are hard to love and harder to hold. They seem like a transient format to me, one wrong-click and it’s gone forever. The ultimate disposable format. To me music should not be disposable like this, but cherished. And I really don’t want my music collection to be solely based around a computer. Where are the joys of flicking through a CD rack on a computer? A CD collection says a lot about a person, what music is contained there, how it is sorted etc. Imagine going over to somebody’s place and just clicking though files. Joyless.

Listening to a CD, while flicking through the booklet is part of the experience in my book. It’s too hard to care about mp3 files. Though they are convenient and mobile, I will admit that. Purchasing a CD is a lot more satisfying to me than purchasing a download, which I just burn on to CD anyway. CDs are not perfect, but I'll stick with them.

Bah humbug.

PS I’m afraid I never embraced Minidiscs, so no comment there I’m afraid, though when’s the last time anyone came across one?