jackliquorice

It took me a long, long time to make up my mind about this one and it felt like an exercise in adding heavy weights to both sides of a set of scales, with neither side tipping the balance.

On the positive side, we have Robert’s voice, which sounds incredible irrespective of his age. Then there are the tunes… some wonderful melodies that bury themselves in your head, especially A Fragile Thing. The lyrics are good too – the tone isn’t unexpected but there’s poignancy in I Can Never Say Goodbye that makes it hit hard and Endsong goes all out. The mood of SOALW is consistent, which you don’t always get with Cure albums; I like… More

On Kuma Cove, Luke Wyland overlays loops of live improvisations, in different tempos, as a representation of his own stutter. As he says, “the musicality of my disfluency is revealed in its frictions, elongations, and foreshortenings.” What we get is a collection of songs with often slightly-disconcerting tones and drones, sometimes metallic, sometimes rumbling, sometimes soaring, with soothing motifs of melody in the foreground and unpredictable, staccato plucked strings or piano, giving Wyland his voice. There's structure and development to the songs, creating a narrative of contrasting emotions locked in tension, battling for ascendency. This is exactly what Tim Hecker does and Kuma Cove offers that intensity, albeit with less abrasive sounds. It's amazing to get lost in this music.… More

Robert Smith has said that he loathed Three Imaginary Boys, even whilst the band were recording the album, and thought of Seventeen Seconds as the first Cure album. The period between the debut and Seventeen Seconds is when he took control of the group from their manager, Chris Parry, who had both produced the debut (instructing them to record everything they’d written) and came up with the idea for the sleeve. There was plenty of change going on during this time. Unknown Pleasures came out a month after Three imaginary Boys. Smith was listening to Bowie’s Low. The band toured with Siouxsie and the Banshees in late ’79 and Smith ended up on guitar for them. Post-punk was… More