So far, this extensive reissue series has seen the Cure transform from a spiky post-punk act (Three Imaginary Boys) to a spooky new wave one (Seventeen Seconds), and from a grand, glacial rock band (Faith) to a fiercer, darker one (Pornography). That's more than enough to make for a striking career in itself: It's 1983, and the Cure is already epically great. But there's a difference between a great rock act and the kind of long-running international pop favorite this band was bound to be, and the music that comes next is what makes that difference.
The mid-80s are the years in which the Cure ceases to be a rock band and becomes a vehicle to plumb Robert Smith's imagination. Asian art, psychedelics, hallucinations-- with the act's lineup effectively swapped to bits, Smith takes up the reins of the studio, and he seems to see each individual song as a chance to literalize some particular dream of his, using pop arrangements to create little worlds that feel astonishingly visual. It's a shame these reissues can't include the band's already-compiled singles from this era, because it's in their ever-changing styles that you get the best sense of what he was doing: trying on a joyous fake-jazz strut for "The Lovecats", making "The Caterpillar" sound like a broken-down music conservatory for fairies, doing bratty, funky synthpop on "Let's Go to Bed" and chilly electro on "The Walk". Rock bands sound good within the context of being rock bands; pop songs like these carried their own context with them, each one a dream to step into.
The Top (1984), however, is not that Cure. Yes, "The Caterpillar" is on here, and "Dressing Up" has a sexy pop-song elegance that's certainly new. But this full-length is the sound of a rock band stretching out in a much less controlled and occasionally bitter way: There are shades of gnarled psychedelia scattered throughout. Songs like "Give Me It" and "Shake Dog Shake" scream and blurt with a grim, bristly rage. The band's signature dirges suddenly feel formless and lethargic in a bad way. The rough home and studio demos on the bonus disc are hard listening in spots, but also instructive: In hearing Smith labor to make this material whole, you get a better sense of how the scattershot styles of the album could be stemming from the same source.
Around the same time, Smith was also recording and touring as a guitar player for fellow goth travelers Siouxsie & the Banshees-- which is part of how we get the Glove, a psych-pop side project for Smith and Banshees bassist Steve Severin. This series is kind enough to include a deluxe package of the band's sole, hard-to-find full-length, 1983's Blue Sunshine. With singer Jeanette Landray taking Siouxsie-like leads on most tracks, the sound is about what you'd expect from a Cure/Banshees crossover, or at least one entranced by Beatles psychedelia. (The band's name comes from Yellow Submarine; around the time this was released, the Banshees were enjoying a hit with a cover of "Dear Prudence".) For most of the record, though-- "Like an Animal", or the Smith-sung "Mr. Alphabet Says"-- what you'd expect is something fairly great, and a definite treat for Cure and Banshees fans who haven't gotten their hands on this yet.
Then there's The Head on the Door (1985). Saying that this is the Cure's most focused pop album-- with a crucial new band lineup solidified, Porl Thompson's guitar on board, and everyone sounding keen and intent-- might seem like a massive compliment, but that designation turns out to be a bit tricky. The singles here were the band's most straightforward to date: An ingratiating rush of guitar on "In Between Days", a jolly twinkling love song on "Close to Me", sappy 80s drama on "A Night Like This". The songs in between make for the sole 80s Cure album you could think about playing at a beach party-- check the strangely Van Halen-ish sustained chords on "Push." And Smith's dreamy imagination of far-away places gets pleasantly touristic: plinking atmospherics on "Kyoto Song," super-speed Spanish guitar on "The Blood". It's a tight, terrific package, and more imaginative than albums this controlled usually get, but it's oddly removed from one of the qualities people have always loved best about the Cure-- the deep, sprawling sound of an album like Disintegration.
But then there's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987), the place where every one of these things comes together. This band is best remembered for Disintegration, yes-- it's the kind of epic, single-minded "statement" that asks to be put up on pedestals. Thing is, you don't get the kind of teenage-bedroom devotion this band got by making epic, single-minded statements. In order to get people to dress like you-- to make a whole world out of your music-- you have to offer them a whole world, one that encompasses all of their moods, every waking moment of their days.
The 18 tracks of Kiss Me's double-LP do exactly that. Every major mode of the Cure is here, and sounding better than ever, each one a realm of its own. There's grand, tormented wailing ("The Kiss", "Fight") next to tender, sunny numbers ("Catch"). There are creepy-crawly Orientalist nightmares ("The Snake Pit", "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep") and slow, sparkling romances ("One More Time"). There are bitter shouts ("Shiver and Shake"), all-pop numbers ("Just Like Heaven"), and complex intersections between the two ("Hot Hot Hot", "Why Can't I Be You?"). Smith's lyrics even find, among the usual animals and anguish, a set of linchpin images that reflect in each of those directions. There is a mouth on the cover, and the songs are full of devouring-- both the devouring mouths of desire and the fear of being consumed. Christmas gets to evoke both gaudy colors and sad nostalgia. There's the deep, dark water that would soon be all over Disintegration, and there's an endless romantic push and pull: someone so perfect that Smith asks "Why can't I be you?" and someone else so perfect that Smith asks, "You want to know why I hate you?" Some of these songs play out mixed-up emotions-- weird crossovers of depression and joy, love and loathing, anger and resignation-- that we barely have names for. Bitter torture and giddy excitement and desire, desire, desire: They all come together into one almost maniacally impassioned thing.
This is the world of the raccoon-eyed, mumbling, moping, endlessly sensitive late-80s Cure fan in one gorgeous, totally immersive package, and it's one of the most convincing, emotionally whole, and individual albums of the decade-- an entire imagined land, complete with sounds, visions, and styles, huge on romance and drama. If you were only ever to buy one Cure album, most people would point you to that landmark Disintegration, and there's every chance you'd be amazed by it. But for the whole breadth of the Cure-- and what seems like the whole head of Smith-- in one glorious package, this is the one that matters.
