Tonight’s contribution to the Cure inspired art challenge on IG
GAME
Inspired by Let’s Go To Bed & (a little) Play With Me.
#kerayzieart #artchallenge #TheCure #art #curetober2025 #curetober #curefanart
#Curetober 31: finishing with *the* Cure anthem. First time I saw the Cure live was the Wish warm up tour in May 92, and this extended arrangement of A Forest floored me: the improvised nods back to so many previous works, that epic climax... From the live 1992 VHS Show (but stupidly, not the album)
#Curetober 30 is How Beautiful You Are, from Kiss Me, otherwise known as Robert Smith's finest lyric. You know a song starting "you want to know why I hate you", despite that title, is gonna be a treat: closing "no one ever knows or loves another" only adds to this. Found a lyric video too, yay!
#Curetober 29 is the hazy, menacing Anniversary from 2005's The Cure. An unfairly maligned album, it was in turns the angriest, wisest, saddest and overall inspired that Robert Smith had sounded in *years*. The closest they ever got to shoegaze, this hits like a chill on a hot summer night.
#Curetober 28 is the magnificent A Night Like This, a towering highlight from The Head On The Door. Simultaneously melancholic and uplifting, it even gets away with a non-more-80s sax solo. Sums up the accessible yet creatively rewarding ethos of the whole album in one quintessential Cure track:
From one glorious closing #Curetober track to another, 27 finished both 1979's debut Three Imaginary Boys and (much cheaper for teenage fans in the days of cassettes or LPs) the 1980 Boys Don't Cry comp. 10:15 may be more iconic, but this is the best pointer to the wonders young Cure had in them
It's odd that 84's The Top is so divisive: yes it's unfocused and messy, but Shake Dog Shake is a quintessential Cure opener, Bird Mad Girl and Dressing Up top drawer winsome Smith poppery, Give Me It, Wailing Wall and The Empty World proper gnashing angst. Oh, have an epic closer for #Curetober 26
#Curetober 25 is In Your House, from 1980's Seventeen Seconds. Drenched in mist, the album was the harbinger of the original "dark trilogy" of albums, while simultaneously laden throughout with catchy hooks and slinky moves. This was a mood Smith would go on to master through the years.
#Curetober 24 is Sinking, the closer from 85's Head On The Door. A dizzy spin of moods, but given Inbetween Days opens "Yesterday I got so old", it shouldn't be surprising that aged only 26, Robert was already preoccupied with aging. More surprising was the return to 17 Seconds/Faith era melancholy
#Curetober 23, on the other hand, is (sorta) unofficial Cure live. Muddy and muffled, and only officially on The Cure Play Out video from 1991. The Big Hand would go on to be an overproduced b-side for A Letter To Elise a year later, but for winter 91 my bootleg copy soundtracked many a late night.
#Curetober 22 is the devastating live version of Homesick, from Entreat. The original is dense and claustrophobic, but this version is simultaneously lighter in tone while drenched in haunting, atmospheric feedback. One of the finest official documents of The Cure as a live force.
#Curetober 21 is a bit of a cheat, in that I've picked the last 2 tracks from 1981's Faith. They segue beautifully, the plaintive pull of The Drowning Man's gorgeous lapping vocals followed by the atmospheric gloom of the title track, this was the saddest the Cure had sounded. Until now, anyway.
Track 20 of #Curetober is Speak My Language, a b-side to 1983's Lovecats. Rebuilding after they had disintegrated in 82, they were a new band in a new direction, yet still unmistakably The Cure. Even with casual poppy b-sides they were seemingly endlessly creative while still easily accessible.
Track 19 of #Curetober now. Much like Want on WMS, The Last Day of Summer from 2000's Bloodflowers was a single moment of wonder in an album that felt strained and overwrought. The great Cure themes are all in this song: bittersweet reflection wrapped in a delicious melancholic fug.
Track 18 of #Curetober, and the opening track from 1996's Wild Mood Swings. The bumpy start to a new, less frequent version of The Cure, Want was the glorious opener to a sprawling, unfocused collection of mostly lacklustre songs, peppered with the odd gem. The imperial run was definitely over.
Track 17 of #Curetober, and I give you the stark, intense Siamese Twins from 1982's Pornography. A lot of the phrasing could be considered histrionic, but you never fail to believe Robert was feeling these things. The Cure have rarely sounded this emotionally raw.
For track 16 of #Curetober I've gone for The Snakepit, from 1987's Kiss Me. Cloyingly claustrophobic, it's a perfect marriage of hypnotic soundscape and Robert's whispered vocals, simultaneously nightmarish and exotic.
Track 15 of #Curetober. 1984's The Top is a woozy, psychedelic affair. Messy and unfocused, much like Robert Smith's state of mind at the time. A nod to Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones, Bananafishbones arrives like a drunken uncle at a wedding, wobbling its unsteady way before finishing with a clatter
#Curetober, Day 14 couldn't be further removed from the last one if it tried. Recorded drunk on borrowed studio time, reading details of an offer for an icing set from the back of a sugar packet, it really shouldn't work. It's an exuberant, youthful reveal of The Cure's unfurling popsmithery.
#Curetober Track 13 is the none-more-nihilistic One Hundred Years, the opening track from 1982's Pornography. You know what to expect when an album starts "it doesn't matter if we all die", and musically Robert's guitar sounds just as haunted as his lyrics. The Cure would rarely sound so dense again
Still playing catch up with #Curetober, Track 12. Kyoto Song is from 1985's The Head On The Door: the fist album by The Cure to embrace the different aspects of the band simultaneously: the highs of Inbetween Days, the desolation of Sinking, and the loveliness that is this in the middle somewhere
Belated Day 11 #Curetober, and a much lighter b-side, from 1990's Never Enough. Inspired by Harold Bishop and Joe Mangle from daytime soap Neighbours, its playful word trickery was quite the contrast from the a-side's angst-riddled gnashing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wLk...
Day 10 and here's This Morning, a b-side/vinyl bonus track from 2005's The Cure. Better than at least half the final track selection, and probably the last great "atmosphere" track of theirs *too date*, but it sounds like Songs Of A Lost World will work in a similar vein #Curetober
Day 9 of #Curetober, and figure I may as well continue the b-sides theme... I can see why This twilight Garden wouldn't have fitted on 1992's Wish, but it's still quite mad that for years the only way to hear it was on the High single from the same year. Rob rarely sounds as romantic as he does here
#curetober, Day 8, and another b-side. This one is from some versions of 1985's Close To Me. When discovering The Cure, the Standing On A Beach compilation cassette, with associated b-sides, was a fantastic intro, and finishing with this dark gem was just perfect
#Curetober, Day 7. The Cure have a truckload of amazing b-sides. Fear Of Ghosts from the 1989 Lovesong single is huge: epic, poetic and dark, like most of Disintegration: "the further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get"
#Curetober, Day 6 of The Cure. 1992's Wish was the first proper Cure album released after I became a massive fan. It's a mixed bag but the best tracks are stratospheric, and Rob's lyrics are peak. "It was the hope of all we might have been, that filled me with the hope to wish... impossible things"
#Curetober Day 5. Technically a b-side to The Walk, but I had Japanese Whispers so it always felt like an album track to me. The Cure was just Bob and Lol at this point in 82, sounding like it was just the two of them with a keyboard. Enthused with magic, melancholy and emotion, I give you Lament.
Day 3 of songs by The Cure. When a new album is your first for 16 years, any work considered recent is all relative, but Labyrinth will probably be the most recent track I post. From the 2005 self-titled album, this showed there was still life and inspiration after some lackluster output #Curetober
Day 2 of a month of songs by The Cure, and I'm going with the gloriously languid If Only Tonight We Could Sleep from 1987's Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. Lyrics perfectly suiting the beautiful instrumentation, its the sonic equivalent of having drunk *way* too much red wine while dizzy in love #Curetober
