While making nihilistically gloomy albums, Robert Smith was also writing some relatively cheery pop songs that were released as singles, separate to the album releases. Three of these were collected on the Japanese Whispers (1983) album. Of the lead tracks, 'The Walk' and 'Let's Go To Bed' are great, jaunty numbers, but it's 'The Lovecats' that sticks out most as being jarringly at odds with what was happening on the albums. It's positively lively is 'The Lovecats', and, if anything, it's carelessly throwaway, a true pop song. It's also a fantastic pop song and it proved that Smith was neither all doom and gloom, nor entirely humourless. The other songs on Japanese Whispers are the B-sides to 'Let's Go To Bed' and 'The Walk' only, and they're not quite as good or as much fun, but they do keep the surprisingly upbeat pace and tone going throughout.
Things change markedly with 1984's The Top, which is a messy, sprawling psychedelic workout of an album compared to the glacial gothery that preceded it. That's not to say that there's a lack of goth about The Top, quite the opposite, but it's an expansive version rather than the shambling, mumbling kind. The demo versions of the songs that are included in my copy are revealing, Smith obviously feeling at the time that he needed to get away from the critical stereotyping that he felt he was getting after the release of Pornography. It was a justified stereotyping to be honest, but The Top is an interesting reaction to it. There's all kinds of unexpected instrumentation and the variety of songwriting is occasionally bewildering; it's a long way from the icy minimalism of Seventeen Seconds. There are some lovely songs on The Top as well, but they tend to be subsumed in the mass of sonic stuff going on. It's a decent stab at moving on, but it isn't the Cure's best album by a long shot, but it certainly freed Smith up to make better records later.
Coo-ee, how we were all told to hate and despise Curve. They were the absolute target for a year or two, accused of all kinds of things but primarily and most damningly of being "fake". The thing about it was, for a band specialising in thudding, juddering dark gothery it was seen as telling that the two key members had been respectively a session bass player for the Eurythmics and a failed chart pop singer, and that they were the first (and I think possibly only(?) signing to Dave Stewart's pretend indie label). How times change, and we all (rightly) love the Sleigh Bells records, but I digress. Having never been that bothered about seeming to be naff, I bought the Curve records and really liked them. Listening to them now I can still hear a really decent stab at trying something slightly different to the indie kid orthodoxy of the early 90's. This stuff is taking its cue from the Sisters of Mercy rather than the MC5 and I respect the boldness of trying that at that time. The songs themselves are a bit underwritten it turns out, relying on massive drum machine thuds and slabs of guitar scree, but this is what Garbage could have sounded like if they had been less desperate to have hits, and again Curve were unlucky to try this stuff at just the wrong time. First EP, 'Blindfold' (1991) has four tunes of varying quality. The lead track ('Ten Little Girls' is great until the menacing rap, which is not (the rap element is something they thankfully didn't try again). Part of the success of Curve's sound (and one of the key evidences for the fakery claims) is Toni Halliday's voice, which while breathless and fairly light is aggressively sexual and I do wonder whether her suggestion that the fact that she was a bit older than the usual indie girl made the boy critics a bit scared of her and made them kick out. 'I Speak Your Every Word' and 'Blindfold' are OK, but final track 'No Escape from Heaven' is ace.
Much better is second EP, 'Frozen' (1991). All four of the songs on 'Frozen' are great, lead 'Coast Is Clear' is a pile-driving bit of sampled guitar noise and drum machine, and it's on this EP that Halliday started working out some actual melodies. 'The Colour Hurts' is a slow, grinding number which has a great, sinister vocal melody and musically is little more than superbly orchestrated feedback. 'Frozen' is more restrained, and comes frighteningly close to having a pop melody and if anything it's the one song from the early records that sounds most like the time it was made. Third EP 'Cherry' (1991) is slightly less engaging, the songs being a bit weaker again. It tries to compensate with the pile-driving bass and wall of noise but although it's still an impressively dense sound, you do want the songs to back it up. The first single to promote an album was 'Fait Accompli' (1992) which is a decent enough song, but in fact the two songs that back it are more interesting. 'Arms Out' sounds like a better version of something that His Name is Alive might have recorded - it's really engaging, a drifting, twisting song that feels strangely slippery, it has much more subtlety than Curve's usual blocks of sound approach. There was an accompanying 12" with an extended remix of Fait Accompli which, like most extended remixes is pretty pointless, and has a couple of live versions of other older songs backing it.
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