Scrub away the teased and sprayed fright wig of hair, the heavy black mascara and pasty-white pancake powder that launched a million goth boys and girls and the red, red lipstick. What’s left? The clever, memorable music of prolific songwriter Robert Smith, better known as the mastermind behind The Cure.
Although The Cure has made impressively varied music since 1978, the British legends never have really received the attention they deserved on this side of the Atlantic. That is about to change.
The ground is softening for one more assault from The Cure–no doubt timed to the release of the band’s latest album in the spring–and will likely include a tour that will last beyond the already announced headlining gig at this year’s Coachella Festival in Indio, Calif.
There’s the use of “Pictures of You” in the omnipresent Hewlett-Packard commercial. There’s Smith singing on blink-182’s new album. And there’s the success of Cure-influenced bands such as Brand New, whose latest single, “Sic Transit Gloria,” even features Smith-like phrasing for its verses.
The most convincing statement for Cure success, though, is the band’s new box set “Join the Dots,” which collects 70 B-sides and rarities that sound as ambitious and powerful as other bands’ greatest hits.
Broken into four CDs spanning the band’s 25-year career chronologically, “Join the Dots” shows how serious Smith was at the outset to make The Cure’s B-sides as catchy as its singles.
The first CD is the most diverse, following the band through its breakthrough as a punkish upstart–in songs such as “10:15 Saturday Night” and “Plastic Passion,” which put the band in the same league as Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees–into its dominance of jangly new wave, seen in “The Exploding Boy” and “A Man Inside My Mouth,” which pushed The Cure to the top of the British charts alongside The Smiths and Tears for Fears.
On the remaining three CDs, the songs become more conventional but no less interesting, offering alternate versions of shoulda-been smashes “Wrong Number” and the recent “Maybe Someday,” as well as the trademark “Just Like Heaven.”
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Edited by Cara DiPasquale (cdipasquale@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
