“But The Cure weren’t even Goth! Or so I heard it argued back in the day. How can you be something that hasn’t even been named yet? What they were, was good, sometimes great, which is true of Caterpillar, a wigged out pop experiment if there ever was one. Nothing does what you expect it to, but it always works, keeps the foot tapping, the head nodding, the earworm slithering.” (Philip Random)
Danielle Dax (pre-teen opera star turned pop experimentalist) was supposed to be the next Kate Bush, but for whatever reason, her textured approach to all things rhythmic, melodic, strange never quite caught on. Dark Adapted Eye, a compilation of some of her earlier releases, is well worth a listen with Brimstone in a Barren Land a standout for its overall feeling of impending doom crossed with cool, possibly hopeful light. 1987 in a nutshell.
“”Back in the day, I generally thought of The Cure as more of a pop band than anything else, and a damned good one. Which perhaps explains why I didn’t listen to Disintegration that much. My loss, because it’s a solid album all the way through. Though to this day, the track I keep coming back to is Lullaby which, it turns out, was their biggest ever hit in the UK. Though not so much here in the Americas, thankfully, because I’m not sick of it. Reminds me of spiders for some reason. In a good way. I mean, they’re our friends, aren’t they?” (Philip Random)
Wherein original punk Siouxsie Sioux (and her loyal Banshees), get carried away in the recording studio to great and delirious effect as this b-side to an okay Beatles cover attests. There was a lot of this kind of stuff in those weird days, old school punks re-reinventing themselves, being fearlessly strange where before they’d just been fearless.
Randophonic 