 The Cure Ahhhhhhhh, early-90s Cure! Put this shit on and I'm like a dog getting its tummy rubbed in all the right ways. As time goes on, for whatever reason, the Wish era is the one I keep going back to – while I think a number of their other albums and phases were better, this is the stuff that's closest to my heart. There's no reason Friday I'm in Love should have turned out to be one of their very best singles. I mean, they'd been at it for like 15 years, and after Disintegration the last thing anyone expected was the pureperfect bubblegum pop of this bright and shiny song. But there it is – and the Cure have always been as unpredictable as anything. The EP has that song plus one of their best b-sides, "Halo," which is more in line with the "classic Cure" sound. "Scared As You" is good too, although as with many Cure b-sides, it's more like a blueprint for something better. In some ways, listening to a lot of Cure is like reading a really good private journal that still gets a little long-winded. And then there's the glorious "strangelove mix" of "Friday." Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It's like "Sugar Sugar" crossed with "Boys Don't Cry" and one of those Born in the USA-era Bruce Springsteen 12" remixes. Wait, did I just reference Bruce Springsteen in a Cure review?
Review by The Big Oof |