Indiecast - It's A Full-On Cure-Cast!

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Steven and Ian begin this week's episode by reflecting on this week's election (0:57). Steven just woke up from a week-long coma and he asked Ian to tell him who won. After they, delve into a less depressing topic: The music of The Cure! They talk about their strong new album, Songs Of A Lost World, and where it fits in the band's career. Then they talk about the best Cure albums, and also rank their top five Cure songs (16:02).In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks up the new Connor O'Malley comedy Rap World while Steven recommends the Jason Molina biography, Riding With The Ghost (51:58).New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 214 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [e-mail], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Indycast is presented by Uprox's indie mixtape. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Indycast. On this show, we talk about the biggest indie news of the week, review albums, and we hash out trends. In this episode, we talk about the cure. That's right, it's a full-on cure cast this week. My name is Stephen Hayden, and I'm joined by my friend and co-host. I just woke up from a week-long coma. I hope he tells me who won the election.

Ian Cohen. Ian, how are you? I mean, it's clearly got to be the one that has Bernie Sanders, Dick Cheney, and Taylor Swift on the same ticket. I mean, how do you top that coalition? You know what I mean? Yeah. So I'll have to check the news as well. But I was hoping with a cure cash, you would start with like, you know, it doesn't matter if we all die type joke, you know?

Look, I'm not nihilistic about this. I thought Trump was going to win. We talked about this last week. I had a bad feeling about the election. it just seemed like the winds were blowing at his back. There was a moment over the weekend where I was listening to some of my little political podcasts on a walk. Unfortunately, I listened to that stuff.

And they were tricking me into thinking that maybe Kamala Harris had a chance, that there was a blowback from the MSG rally happening in the Puerto Rican community in Pennsylvania and that women were going to rise up post-Dobbs and, you know, Republican women were going to lie to their husbands and vote for Kamala Harris, the shy Kamala voters were going to come out. And of course, it was all bullshit. Trump just annihilates Harris. I mean, I think the popular vote, he's only going to win by about 1.5%, which isn't, you know, like a Reagan beating Mondale type landslide. But this is a convicted felon who won the popular vote and won the electoral college handily.

Yeah, he did it. He did it, man. My story, my story, to yours, like, I was at Dia Dela's Deflones, like, waiting for, you know, like, just killing time before Sunday Day real estate went on. And that's when I saw the Selser poll and just feeling pretty good about things. You know, it's like, oh, well, they got freeway endorsing maybe him and, like, PD crack will do flip side to get, like, the Puerto Rican vote out in, you know, Pennsylvania. I had that same feeling of like, oh, maybe, maybe like this is just going to be a blowout and it's going to be, you know, 2012 style. In reality, it's like the first time I think a Republican won the popular vote since, like,

the year Arcade Fire's funeral came out or hot fuss, however else you want to describe 2004. 2004. George W. Bush. Yeah. In the throes of two wars, you know, when it was already maybe. clear that he lied about the weapons of mass destruction. Yeah, he won the popular vote in 2004. Kind of like a weird parallel, really, to that.

Where you feel like, because he didn't win the popular vote in 2000. There was the whole chicanery going on with the Supreme Court, similar to how Trump didn't win the popular vote in 16. And then when he does win, after all of this crap comes out, that's when he wins the popular vote and just seems to have this incredible mandate. I don't want to get too much in the politics of it because politics cast is a very touchy thing. So I just want to talk about the media for a second because, you know, Kamala Harris lost the election, but the media, I think, really lost this election. And the thing about Democrats is, look, most people are not ideological.

In two years when the midterms happen, I wouldn't be surprised if the Democrats got the Senate back. Because people look at their lives and they vote. on their own circumstances. And if you look at your life and you're like, I'm not happy, you just vote for whoever's not in power. And we've seen this for decades in this country. It's just flip-flopping back and forth. You know, I don't like this party.

So I'm going to vote for the other party. And then four years later, it's like, I don't like this party. I'm going to vote for this party. We're weather veins, the American people. But hating the media, I think, is a constant. You know, that's never going to change. And Trump's superpower is that the media hates him. And the media actively tries to undermine him with good reason.

You know, I'm in support of that. But that hatred of Trump by the media is his superpower because people hate the media more than they hate Trump. And they vote for Trump in part to spite what they see as condescending people on television, in newspapers online, who are lecturing to them rather than listening to them. And look, this is very similar to 2016. You felt like that was a moment when people were like, wow, we have to go out, we have to talk to more people, we have to find out like why people feel this way.

And then that quickly gets clamped down and it just becomes, well, people are idiots. You can't persuade them. They're just going to do what they're going to do. And it's this defeatist attitude that is totally self-defeating, I think, for people who are anti-Trump. And, you know, it's similar to the music media. We've talked about this in music media that, like, in music media,

people want to report on, like, what they want reality to be sometimes, more than, like, what reality actually is. Like, there's this whole, like, group of artists who stream really well on Spotify. They do big numbers on the road, and they never get written about because they don't really fit, like, the narratives that, like, music writers, are favoring in a particular moment. So you end up missing, like, a huge part of the story about what happens in music. The nice thing about music media is that these things don't really matter.

You know, like, we can talk about, you know, artist X. You should listen to, I don't know, who's a critically, you listen to Sudan archives instead of Ed Sheeran. Like, Ed Shearin is garbage. Listen to Sudan archives. And it doesn't really matter because, you know, we're just talking about records. But I think in the political media, it becomes a situation where I think the media, in being anti-Trump, they actually end up helping Trump because they take true things and they make them untrue, at least in the eyes of people that are in the public and need to be persuaded. I saw this over and over about the economy, this cycle, like where you have people out there who are saying, I can't afford groceries.

like prices are too high. The economy is not where I need it to be right now. And then you have people on TV who pull out their charts and they say, well, actually, inflation has been going down since 2022 and unemployment is down and the stock market is up. So actually the economy is doing great. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. And that person on TV, like, all those things are true. They're giving people facts. Those are all true on the macro level. But if you tell somebody, if someone comes to you and they say, I'm in pain, and you tell them, well, actually, you're not in pain. And the reason you're not in pain is ABC. That's not going to make the person feel better.

It's going to make them go find another person who's going to recognize their pain and say, hey, I'm going to give you some hope. I'm going to help you feel better in the future. I think that's something that the media does over and over again, and I don't think they're going to learn the lesson. Just like they didn't learn the lesson in 2016. It's a very close-minded institution. And I think we're in a situation now, like, we're Democrats. They're the critics' favorites of the political world.

You know, like, they're the artists that, like, we tell people, you should support this person and you're dumb if you don't listen to this. Oh, man. We've reached, like, the great Ice Age Democratic Party theory of politics. Don't like cold play. Listen to Ice Age. And, like, look, not disputing the validity of that. Like, you may very well be true.

the condescension and the lecturing rather than the listening, I think it's just been lethal for the media across the board. And look, I'm a member of the media. I make my living in the media. But the media is in decline. And weeks like this make me feel like the media deserves it. And I say this is someone who makes his living in the media. But we do such a poor job, I think, in just listening to people and trying to make sense of where they're coming from. We just want to lecture them. And that is not, I think, a good thing to do, just in terms of your job, because it's not your job to lecture people.

And, too, if you are trying to sort of engineer desirable political outcomes, this ain't working. It's not working. It turns people off. It actually drives them in the opposite direction. So are people going to learn that lesson? I doubt it. I think the media is going to continue to be in decline.

And hating the media will be the media will be, the universal thing moving forward, even as people flip-flop on who they're going to vote for. Yeah, and I think this is kind of interesting where you talk about like the media, because we need a little bit of a carve-out for, you know, as two guys who host a podcast, because apparently our demographic was a major driver. Yeah. To the other side. And I think you got to get to a point where it's like, I saw someone mentioned it's like not

even about like left and right anymore so much as like system versus. anti-system and uh if you're like 18 to 22 years old or you're just like somebody who's like you know doesn't understand why the economy as well just that like hey i'm paying two dollars more for a box of cereal than i did in 2022 uh you know like having you know biance or cardi b or like or even like you know boni vare doing a celebrity endorsement you know it's like well what like It's just like you're being told like, no, this is, you're being kind of like scolded. And, you know, if you're like a 20 year old guy who's voting for the first time, you know, it's like the onion article.

It's like, which mess is going to resonate more with voters? Like, let's talk about mileage or kill the bastards. It's kind of grim. But I think that like you're kind of getting, you're bringing up a point which I've already started to see, which is that, you know, in 2017 or 2016, for that matter, when we saw this result. You know, there was this sense that the media was actually going to save us. Obviously, like, you know, the Washington Post and the New York Times saw an explosion in subscriptions. And, you know, everyone was buying Philip Roth's A Cod Against America on Amazon. And I, you do not see that at all.

Like, you know, it's not like, oh, you know, we need, you know, this. I've not seen a single person say that this is going to be great for punk music. I've seen, though, people, I've seen like two good friends of the pod say, yeah, fuck this. I'm going to listen to Sun Kill Moon and brand new again. You know, I think that really does describe it. It's like a real Mazar asleep in America moment. Yeah, yeah, I just think, I mean, that's a whole other issue. And it'll be interesting to dive into that maybe in the weeks ahead.

I actually have a column out on Up Rocks today. I didn't ask a music critic column and someone asked me the inevitable question. How do you think Trump is going to affect music moving forward? the old punk rock question. And I don't want to totally cannibalize my column. Please go online and read it. But I do think, and I don't think Trump caused this, I think this was already happening.

And I actually think it might have even been more pronounced under a Harris administration. But I do think we're moving in a direction where music is going to be a little less PC, more offensive. I think you're going to see more artists that are like sort of proudly Trumpian. You know, like that Jason L. Dean song that came out last year that tried that in a small town.

Oh, God. Like, that was last year? That was last year, yeah. And how... You could have told me that was like four months ago, and I probably would have believed that, too. I think there's going to be more songs like that. I think there's going to be a return to, like... I think we talked about this before, but like M&M 2.0.

I could see an artist like... Someone who just comes out and says, really offensive things. because I think that's in the culture. Like the Tom Brady roast, to me, is like a cultural bellwether where that came out and you saw all these people saying, oh, we can be funny again. Like, that was something I saw repeatedly. And what that really meant was, oh, we can, like, say racial slurs in an ironic way. We can be offensive in a joking way.

Like, oh, we don't really mean it type fashion, which was really like a predominant form of humor. Again, going back to the Bush here. Like that was a big Bush years type comedy that was happening. And that was acceptable. And then Obama came in and that came out of favor. I really see that happen. Because right now we have like the music world, which seems very sort of female dominated and left leaning.

And then you have like the podcast world, which all these bros are listening to podcasts. They listen to Joe Rogan or Rogan adjacent comics. And it's like the young men are listening to the podcast. The young women are listening to the pop music, and it's like, these worlds have to collide. I feel like they're touching right now. They're like, you know, brushing shoulders, and it's going to collide in the next few years. And I don't know, it'll be interesting to see what happens with that.

Yeah, I'm thinking it's going to be kind of a combination of, you know, maybe like late Reagan era hair metal slash Andrew Dice Clay with like early 2000s Vice magazine. by the way. Or like the limp, like the limp biscuit. Who's going to be the limp biscuit of Trump 2.0 years? And the wild thing, though, it's that, but that was like Clinton era where there was like a lot of optimism. And like, yeah. So I mean, I get it. That was like also sort of like whatever we don't need to give a shit about politics sort of time.

So yeah, the arc of history always bends towards a biscuit. That is our astute political commentary today. There might be someone listening to this right now, an aspiring indie rocker who's not making it. And he's like, I want to make some money. I'm going to buy a red baseball cap and turn it backwards. And I'm going to make rap rock. And I'm going to take over the world. You know, like we have the dare who's doing LCD sound system cosplay.

We need like the dare of limp biscuit. Like that's going to be a thing. Some dude who's just blatantly dressing like durst. You know, the oversized jacket, the backward red baseball cap, the little chin beard. Maybe the chin beard's going to come back as a major follicle choice for young men. Woo, can't wait, man. Yeah. This is great.

As a matter of fact, we got to get our boy Kirk, Holiday Kirk. Because, like, I guarantee if there is, if there is one of those people out there, that person is on the cutting edge and finding out about that. Yeah. He's going to be the new cohose. the show. It won't be me in there. You and Holiday Kirk from Crazy S. Moments and New Metal, that account. Shout out to him. Yeah. He's going to be the new co-host. They're going to get me out of here. All right. Well, enough of this. Enough of talking about the election. Let's talk about

something that's not depressing. The Music of the Cure. There was a new Cure record that came out last week. It was songs of a lost world. And we're We're covering it this week because we didn't get an advanced copy. We had to wait like the rest of you to hear the record. I actually went out and I bought the CD at a local record store. I was at the counter and the guy actually said, you know, there's a deluxe edition of this. And he brought me over to the display and he's like, for $299, you get a bonus disc of instrumentals. And it was like the album on Blu-ray as well.

you get like the 5.1 audio or whatever. And the thing with The Cure, and we'll get into it, that's one of the great things about this record. Robert Smith is really doing all of the great cure things that we all love, is do you really need instrumental versions of these songs? Like when he doesn't enter the song for like three minutes? Like half of these songs are already instrumentals. I mean like half of the song, each track is practically instrumental.

So I don't know what the point of that is. But anyway, I bought the CD, listening to it a bunch. And I think we're both on board with this record. I mean, we're going to talk about the cure their overall catalog here in a minute, diving into albums and songs and all that. But as far as this new record goes, I mean, it's getting great reviews. Did you say that it's second to brat on Metacritic right now? I think so.

It's like got like a 93, which it holds. Wow. Yeah. Because like I'm like, at the early, outset it was like at 95 which is where Brat settled at. I'm like oh well this is going to inevitably go down but no it's uh yeah Brat was at a 95 this is number two uh in the year number three tied are two of our choices Laura Marling and Blaine incantation followed by Cowboy Carter uh true story what if cowboy Carter came out this week

Would it get better reviews or worse reviews? Would people gravitate to it as like an anti-Trump record? I mean, not literally, but like we're going to embrace this because it's the antithesis of what we think Trump is. Or would people look at that as like an example of like bloated neoliberalism culture? Not saying that it is. I'm just, what do you think people would go or would it be somewhere in the middle? Gosh, I mean, I would imagine that people, I think what we're seeing right now are just like people like scrambling for explanations or people to blame it.

Like I, if you wanted to find like a take that beyond like, because, you know, Beyonce, I believe did a showed up to the Kamala Harris rally in Houston and just maybe just kind of like a symbolic sort of thing of like failed neoliberalism celebrity culture. You can do that. Like I don't, I'm sure you would get both. I think that's the kind of thing we've seen over the. past day or so, which is that you will see competing and oftentimes conflicting explanations for what's happening. And whatever you want, like, if you want to see people blaming the left for Kamala Harris losing, you can do that.

If you want to sign people blaming like centrist, like you can find whatever you want. I think that's kind of the true thing about media, which is that there's no real center. It's so atomized. But yeah, I guess we could just be kind of glad that, I don't know, I don't even know what's coming out this week. Yeah, I mean, I think if this shows up in the Atlantic in a week, like if someone has a column with this premise, I think we should take credit for it. I think that freelancer listened to the show and they're going to steal the idea, which is

fine. We're not going to use it. Maybe just kick your boys a little 15% of your commission. That would be a good move perhaps. But going back to the cure, we're already done with media cast, politics cast. We've got to stick with Cure cast here. that metacritic score i mean look i think this is really good record i like it a lot and we can get into where we think this record lands in terms of is it the best since disintegration is it the best

since blood flowers you know is it the best since uh i forget what was the what was their last record was it uh four 13 dreams so i did a cures album ranking which should publish either uh probably tomorrow and so I went I listened to the tomorrow being Friday you mean Friday yes I believe the day that we post yes so yeah 413 dream uh yeah the 2000s uh cure catalog is really I don't want to say fascinating to revisit because like these albums for the most part aren't very good at all but what whoa whoa whoa whoa bloodflowers is a good record oh no yeah I yeah I kind of have to technically count that because like it did come out in 2000 I love that record by the way But yeah, the cure of the self-titled and 413 Dream.

Those just really interesting time capsules. But yeah, because like if you say, oh, it's the best album since disintegration, you know, that covers 35 years. If you say it's the best since blood flowers, that's like, you know, the best in like 24 years. So like... Deseintegration, I don't... Let's just put that aside because it's not better than wish. No, absolutely not. It's a sexier headline to say it's the best since disintegration, but it's not better than wish.

I'm pretty, I think since Blood Flowers is a very, you're very solid ground with that. It's an interesting conversation. I don't know how deep into the weeds we want to get with this. Is this record better than Blood Flowers or not? Because to me, this record is most similar to Blood Flowers than any other record in the Cure Catalog, in the sense that you really feel Robert Smith is going back to the roots and is, I'm going to do what I do. And he hasn't always done that.

He did have that kind of legacy band thing in the 2000s where on the self-title record, that was the record he made with Ross Robinson, who, you know, big new metal producer. And it's not like he made a new metal record, but it's like a little more of an aggressive, I guess, cure record relative to the rest of the catalog. but I don't think you could argue that the reception to this new album isn't affected by the gap

since the last one, the 16-year gap. If there had been like a four-year gap between Kure albums, I don't think this record would be, I don't think it would have a 93. I think it would be well-received, but I don't think people would be as excited about it. You know, the Kier, they were recently inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they did this very well-received tour. Robert Smith was outspoken about keeping ticket prices low. So there's a lot of goodwill toward them.

And they also made a really good record. So it was set up for them to do well, and they delivered a really good record. I will say listening to this album, one of the things that really struck me was that there are a lot of bands that are attempting to do things like The Cure. Like I saw one person comment to me. I thought this was kind of funny, even if it might even be true, that like Robert Smith has been listening to a lot of parinol lately. It's sort of like saying, like, Paul McCartney's been listening to Oasis a lot lately,

and that's helped him with his songwriting. But there are a lot of bands who are inspired by the cure and are doing the things that the cure did, you know, listening to disintegration, this lush, beautiful kind of dream pop type sounds. But they don't quite have the budget to pull it off on like the grandest possible level. And when you listen to this record, and the song that really bold me over is, and nothing was forever, which is the second track. And it's this beautiful song, piano, big string section. It just swells and swells.

I think it's about seven minutes long. And you listen to it and you're like, okay, this is the best case for The Cure making a throwback record. because they're the only band that is capable of fully pulling off the cure-like effect. The cure is still the best at being the cure. And look, I love the dive record that came out this year. I think there's some cure-like qualities to that record. But they don't quite have the money to sound as huge as this album is. You know, they can do other things maybe that Robert Smith can't do in 2024,

but they can't make Lawrence of Arabia of goth rock, you know? And that's what Robert Smith can do. And that's my big kind of takeaway or appreciation of this record that, oh, this is just like a beautiful lush cure record, like a 90s alt rock record. This is the record that like Billy Corgan would love to make with smashing pumpkins. Like if he could make a record that was as grand as Siamese dream, he would. But he can't quite do it. but like Robert Smith, he's not making disintegration, not as good as that,

but he's getting close enough that it really scratches that itch if you have that for that kind of music. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, like if we're talking about the reception of it, like the mood was right for a new Cure record, that was like really good. And I think that, you know, our context for understanding, whether it's the best album since Wish, which would just, mean it's like better than blood flowers or better than blood whatever it is it's just that i don't know

if people really have a vocabulary to describe like a really good cure album so they're inherently saying oh it's like kind of classic you know what i mean and it does you know have a similar vibe to faith or blood flowers it's not quite disintegration because like for all the reputation of disintegration is this like grandiose like monolithic masterpiece it still had love song it still has pictures of you. There are still like some pop songs. They're not doing that here. But I do want to get to a point that you kind of alighted over and I'm surprised you didn't stress this is that you went to the store and bought this on CD. This is a CD album. Oh, hell yeah.

This sounds like, like the cure is one of my, in my opinion, like a definitive CD man. Like you need the CD. Exactly. And this album sounds like a compact disc. You know what I mean? and I say that in like both I think it's like positive and negative like it doesn't quite have the warmth that I would want from a cure album I think some of the drums

that's not a bit thin but you know like I was actually like really skeptical of this album because of the rave reviews before I experienced it because I saw them live and I heard some of these songs that were that appear on the album

and you know it's doing kind of the cure cheat code thing like the intro is like three minutes and like Robert Smith is doing the thing where he sings about like birds and the sky and she said and I said and um you know it's like okay this is good but like is it like is this real you know and then on November 1st I'm like I've listened this album like three consecutive times it does a really good job of just like when you're listening to the cure like a good cure album kind of blots out everything else in the world to the point where these lines that might sound cliche just have this bearing of truth and everything

really is as enormous as Robert Smith says it is. And yeah, like I was, I am not willing to say that it's like, you know, a top three cure album, you know, sneak preview of like where it arise. But if it's as good, I loved bloodfowler. So, like, I was in college and, you know, this was like the first cure album that I had experienced, like, is kind of new after having my big cure phase. Like, wild boot swings was not that record. I hadn't really discovered them yet. And so I had the chance to kind of formulate my own opinion in real time. And, you know, like, if it provides me something similar to bloodflowers, then, yeah, like, he did the job.

I just wonder where it's going to show up in year-end lists, you know what I mean? because the score itself suggests that it's going to go toe to toe with like brat or cowboy Carter and I do not think that's the case. Yeah, I think that score reflects the 47 year old music writer community coming out and supporting the cure, which, you know, that's my community. So I, you know, no shots at them. Those are my people. But yeah, I wonder are like 24 year old music critics going to be putting this album up high?

Maybe. I mean, the Cure is the rare legacy band of that 80s alt rock era that I think does have credibility with younger listeners. One band that I couldn't help thinking about listening to this album because I think about this band often is U2. Because they are of a similar vintage to The Cure. They have similar careers in a lot of ways. And just thinking, like, does you two have a record like that? this in them at this point in their career where it's a really good record and it's also a record that embraces the things that people love about them. Because, you know, when the cure put out blood flowers in 2000, that was the same year that you two put out all that you can't leave behind,

which was in a way, they're blood flowers. I mean, it was them being like, okay, we're just going to make songs that kind of sound like the Joshua tree. Yeah. And because people aren't really into us walking out of lemons anymore and being ironic on the pop mart tour we're just going to be earnest and we're going to write big guitar songs and it worked i mean it worked even better for you two that was a huge record oh yeah um but you two is locked in this sort of and i would say bono in particular he's locked in this into this i think mentality of i need to engage with the pop world and we need to be relevant in the pop world so i don't know i mean there's two questions. Could they make a record like this? I actually think they could. I think at the edge probably

has a vault of tapes with cool guitar riffs on them that Bono would just have to write, you know, just write some songs about the desert and America and sing it over these guitar riffs. I think you probably have a pretty good album. But I don't know if the desire or the will is there to do this kind of record. I mean, in terms of like late period albums by great artists or great bands. Where do you think this record lies? I mean, do you think this is going to be like, oh, this is like a David Bowie Black Star

or like a Bob, I mean, Bob Dylan's had a bunch of records like this in his career? Do you think it's going to be like that defining late period masterpiece or classic or is this a record that people are going to enjoy and then just slot in the middle of their cure collection and maybe not dig it out as much? Yeah, you know, I was thinking about the cure just because of like their longevity along the lines of like a Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or David Bowie. And like also like, you know, Black Star, you wanted it darker.

Those became much more resident because both of those artists died shortly thereafter. And of course, it's just like a last well in testament sort of thing, which. Robert Smith is a healthy, we think, so that's good. Yeah. I don't think anything's going to happen to him. Yeah, this album is largely inspired by like the death of like his mother, his father and his older brother. So I think that kind of gives it a bit of more urgency than, you know, some like blood flowers, which is just like, I'm turning 39.

You know what I mean? But I'm going to like kind of slide out of the view of, you know, Hall of Famers. And maybe it's just the fact that I went to Dea Dea Deilis Deftones recently, a band that was massively inspired by The Cure. They covered one of my favorite songs by The Cure. I think of it, like similar to the last Deftones album, Omes, which came. out in 2020, which obviously the timeline's not the same, but that was a, like, that was hugely celebrated to a degree that the previous Deftones albums weren't because like, oh, this

is like classic Deftones after some of some records where they did it, you know, they had like kind of shitty production and they got back to the classics that working with Terry Date. Yeah, people were like calling that like, oh, this is the best since White Pony. And now it's kind of like slid into like a mid, like a mid range. Def Tones album. But at the time, people were like, oh, this one's back. It has an 87 on Metacritic. People were excited about it in a way they hadn't been before.

So I think of this as like probably like a six to nine ranking Cure album. And I think that's where it's going to keep landing. I don't think it's going to be viewed as like a masterpiece on the same level as disintegration. Because it just won't have that same sort of cultural impact. You know, it's, like, I think the difference between, like, U-2 and The Cure is that the Cure can make a kind of for the heads masterpiece, whereas a U-2 album isn't, like, resonating on the same way as, like, Beautiful Day, if they're not playing the Super Bowl, if they're not applying to be the biggest band of the world again, like, it's just not you two. Yeah, I think you're right. It feels like this record will be, like, in the six to nine range in the catalog, which, let's be clear, is a great accomplice. for a KER record in 2024.

I don't think you could really hope for anything better than that. Like they would compete for at least like the second tier in their catalog. So don't want to diminish the record in any way by putting it there. I think with the Kure, if you look at their top five albums, people are going to make a top five. There's probably at least three that are locks that would be on anyone's list. Like maybe you have like your personal favorite in there somewhere, but it feels like the top of their catalog is pretty well locked in. And you talked about your list, which again, it sounds like it's publishing today the day that this episode posts on Friday. So go check that on Uprocks.

I haven't seen your list, but I'm confident. I'm like 99.9% sure that your number one is disintegration. Maybe you don't want to confirm that. You want people to read the list. But I feel pretty confident. and saying that your number one is disintegration, what are the albums that at least challenge disintegration a little bit in your mind?

Like, what are, because I do think disintegration is the kind of rare consensus record where you really can't dispute it. It just feels like they're magnumopus. Like you said, it has a reputation for being this monolithic record, which it is in places, but it also has three of their biggest.

songs. Fascination Street, Pictures of You, and Love Song. So it also has the pop element. You know, so it kind of gives you everything you would want on one record. But what do you think are like the 1B, 1C, 1D records for the cure? Yeah.

You mentioned like the, I guess, the understated diversity of disintegration. You know, the difference is like, you know, Pictures of View of Fascination Street. Those are like five, six, seven minutes long. But, but, if you want to like everything the cure does i oftentimes say that uh kiss me kiss me kiss me if it's not the best cure record it might be the best place to start if we're talking straight up albums otherwise like

yeah staring at the sea is going to get you what you need there as well but um that album uh which came out right before disintegration it's so weird that like you know as i did my research like robert smith made disintegration as kind of a reaction to kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me he like was turning 29 or he's turning 30s like i haven't written my masterpiece yet they were seen as like kind of frivolous um based on songs like you know why can't i be you or hot hot hot um but you know aside from like the hits kiss me is the one that has just like heaven on it um which i i remember reading the old spin album guide and they were not particularly high on this record they called just like having a rip off of in between days if you can imagine like this just gets to with something

that we're probably going to talk about, which is just like how much the cure was despised by mainstream music publications. Dysintegration was like, it was in the top 100 when Apple Music made that list. I looked at the Pazzochop from 1989, and it was 39 below Don Henley and Aerosmith's pump. Like that's, and some of the Rolling Stones reviews from back in the air are just like so vicious. But have you read Robert Criscoe's review of disintegration?

I've not. I read J.D. Concedine's review of pornography in Rolling Stone, which is just like historically awful. But I'm imagining he doesn't. He gave it a C minus. And I don't know, Robert Criscoe, I think he hates every great alternative rock, hard rock, and metal record from the 80s. Like just look up any record from alt rock, hard rock, or metal from the 80s that you love, whether it's disintegration, or appetite for destruction or back in black, whatever it is. And you'll have Crisco in there. I remember, I was listening to a deaf leopard's hysteria recently. And of course, that's like what I'll need to see. Oh, I'm sure he hated that record.

It's like, you never go wrong going the opposite of Crisco when he's running about that. I think he even had like some shitty things to say about public enemy back in the day. But yeah, so if we're talking about like the challengers, like kiss me. Kiss Me Kiss Me, Kiss Me is like sort of the kind of one B in that it's like peak era. It's got great songs that are like pop songs, but also they're more experimental side. It's sort of like, you know, like London Calling or Melancholy and Infinite Sadness, like a band of Peak of the Powers doing just everything. But I will also say that if there's any, I guess, like, album that is embraced by the fanatical wing of the cure,

that is definitely pornography. I think aside from disintegration, if you did a straw poll, that would be one where people are voting at number one or way out of the top five. If you're putting pornography at number one, that is you making a statement about what you think is the real cure,

which is to say really dark and just no hits whatsoever. Even though like the hanging garden in a hundred years are like really catchy songs. That would be like if you're doing this list to kind of make a point. about how you view the cure, that's the case there. But otherwise, like, I don't, like, aside from those three, I don't really see, you know, an album that people would put it.

I mean, maybe people would, like, be kind of cute and put, like, staring at the sea there. Because, like, it, like, the cure is, like, a great singles B-Sides alternate takes, man. In making this list, I realized, like, and again, because I'm American, uh, We got Boys Don't Cry as the album. That was the debut. Three imaginary boys does not have killing an Arab. It does not have jumping someone else's train. It does not have Boys Don't Cry.

But it does have a cover of Jimmy Hendrix Foxy Lady on there. Yeah, see, yeah, a lot of those early British, you know, a lot of those like punk records or post-punk records, they don't have like the hit singles on there. They don't have them on the British editions. Like that's the same with the first clash record where I actually prefer the, you know, American version of the first clash record because all the great singles from that time are on there and some of the dodgy or album tracks like hate and war for instance isn't on the American version but like complete control is and it's like the purest in me is like well you should listen to the British version but it's like well this American bastardized version is just so much better yeah but

yeah I mean I think again going back to what I was saying if you if you were to look at anyone's cure top five, I feel like the locks are disintegration, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, and pornography. I mean, those feel like you probably have to have those in your top five because they just feel like so important to the overall catalog. I'll say like for me, I think Wish should be a contender if it's not. It's not as good as disintegration. But I have such affectionate for that album, maybe because it came out when I was in junior high school. I remember a lot of those singles. Obviously Friday I'm in Love is a big one,

but Letter to Elise is on there as well. Doing the Unstuck is on there. Covered by the hotel year that song. And it's the record where they got closest to sounding like a normal arena rock band. Like there's tracks on that album where if you played just the instrumental section for somebody, you could trick them into thinking that it's a YouTube

record or an REM record from the early 90s. And you definitely can't say that about disintegration. You know, that is so solidly cure. But, you know, like from the edge of the dark green sea, for instance. Yeah. Like that song is such a big, that could have been on Octune Baby, or it could have been on like green or something if you take out the Robert Smith vocals. And I'm sure there's a lot of cure fans who would count that aspect of it against the

record. Yeah. Especially if they're going to be a snob about Friday I'm in love, which to me is just like a perfect pop song. I don't know how you could hate that song. But it's one of the things I really like about Wish. I love the arena rockness of it. And I think the songs are also great.

I would also shout out the head on the door as being a record that feels like a really important album in terms of alt rock in general. It's the place like where the cure pulls out of that. early goth period and starts to go toward the mainstream a little bit in between days is on that record and there's some other hits on there i know that's the first cure album that trent resner ever owned like he talked about that in the induction speech uh that he gave for the cure when they went to the rock and roll hall of fame um so that feels critical to me so i think that would be a challenger as well but yeah i don't know again disintegration it's the magnum opus it if you're not

going to put it at number one. You have to be prepared to make a very persuasive case because, I don't know, it's hard to deny that album. Yeah, Wish is an album that I have ranked probably higher than most people would expect. You're absolutely correct in that it, because of when it came out in 1992, it has that early 90s, 80s legacy bands making arena rock type feel to it. But it also, like, it's like kind of their Mad Chester album, because like the edge of the deep Green Sea is like also you can think of that as like a like a like a hyped up happy Mondays or Stone Roses song same with open um and Friday I'm in love I think that that out that songs like that certainly not underrated but like if you really like deep dive into

the cure especially since that album all like their like attempts at making quote pop songs sound like just like heaven that none of them try to sound like Friday I'm in love or high for that matter. So, yeah, it's, and even the quote unquote filler is still pretty good on that record. So I think that's an album that, uh, its reputation is, um, you know, a little bit, uh, suppressed by just the fact that he came after, uh, disintegration. But like my, my little, like my personal favorite, like the album I probably have ranked higher than anyone else who would be making a list like this is the top. That's the album that came between pornography and, and, you know, I'm going to head on the door where it's like the darkest cure album but like then the one where they made like a

kind of all fill or no killer this is like just though such a bugged out album um it is like scarier in many ways than pornography uh but it's also got like the caterpillar and like some really like tom waitty and like pop top tom waitian type songs just uh you i i think it was out of print in american while like i found it a ucd store and it's like it's like it it If you like, I mean, I'm sure you can appreciate this as someone who's done many, many album and songs ranking list. It's like the, you know, the small, weird album that they release, like, kind of at the peak of their powers that, like, nobody likes. Like, around the world in the day is the closest comparison I've come up with it. But, yeah, I'm sure that Neil Young and Bob Dylan have a lot of the top type albums.

And they have albums like that released around the same time. I mean, in the, you know, early to mid-80s, that was a time for, you know, legendary artists to just lose their minds a little bit and make totally wacky or unexpected records that end up being lovable in retrospect. So I can get behind the top. I wouldn't put it in my top five, but I respect that choice if that's what you did. Yeah. No, I try to. But I'm like, I can't really justify this, you know. I tried to put it.

I'm like, let's top five of it, but it's like there's no way. Like, I can't really say it's better than head on the tour. So you just ranked Cure albums. I did a ranking of Cure songs. When was that, like a year ago? And I did my top 40 Cure songs. And I was just looking at my list. Do you have like a top five Cure songs?

Like, that you could just unspool? Yeah. So, I mean, if we're talking about, like, it's really hard to like do a list like this without acknowledging the most popular songs. So I'm going to try to shy away from that. Like the songs that are most beloved are there for a reason. But if I'm going to like pick the, I don't know, the Ian's choice, I would go with if only

tonight we could sleep. That is a song from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, that was covered by Death Tones and played on the MTV icon, the fourth and final MTV icon that aired in 2004 where the Cure were celebrated by AFI, or deaf tones, not the deaf tones. Blink 182 were on there because they had a song where Robert Smith had a guest vocal and razor light. So real piece of, real piece of Bush era programming there. Wow.

I'm going to go with Lost. This is the opening track from the Ross Robinson produced self-titled album. The most new metal song, The Cura's Ever. It's fucking awesome. It is easily, I mean, their best song of the 21st century. Incredible vocal performance. That's like, yeah, Ross Robinson got in there and like push them to the brink of insanity. I'm going to go with the mixed up remix of Fascination Street.

I think we've talked about mixed up on this podcast before because I'm sure we've done the best remix albums. I remember a girl in college who was a couple years older than me, told me that is like the best makeout album of all time. It's like a Richard Lake later movie. So I'm going to go with 100 years as well, the opening track of pornography. It doesn't matter if we all die is an S-tier album opening lyric. And let's but not least, I'm going to put Shake Dog Shake, which is the opening track on the top. And it kind of sounds like pour some sugar on me, except it's entirely about like Robert Smith's drug-induced psychosis. So I also like, if we're going to go with that album, the Paris, that was a live album.

that they did after Wish, that version of dressing up, which is a real deep cut. So those are just like the Ian personal favorites. They're not the five best Cure songs, but they're the ones that kind of shape what I love about the band. So that is the deep cut list. I'm going to give my top five now, and this is much chalkier. But I think probably more correct in terms of if we're just talking about, these are my top five favorite songs.

And if you want to talk about best, I think this would maybe be a pretty good selection. Number five, I have in-between days, which to me is just such a definitive sounding, certainly 80-sounding Kier song. Number four, I have a forest, 1980. Oh, yeah. Again, just a definitive, not just Kier song of that era, but like just post-punk goth type music. One of the first songs I feel like where it has like the long intro, which is such a great cure signature. I love the long intros in cure songs. Number three, love song. Again, very chalky,

but just a classic. It is what the title is. It's just a great love song. Number two, pictures of you. Yeah. The best opener of any, the best introduction to a song. Yes. You know, a minute 50 of just Robert Smith and Simon Gallup feeling each other. Just be on each other. just beautiful and the number one again super what do you think number one is it's got to be just like having exactly

the one that covered by Dinosaur Jr., you know it's a Jason Isbell just covered it on his latest live record just I mean I was listening to the song yesterday it doesn't have like the super long introduction but the introduction to this song is just perfect more bands should

rip off what the cure do at the beginning of just like heaven where you have the bass and drums then like each instrument enters like as a great entrance you know the rhythm guitar the synth and then the lead guitar playing the riff just brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant dive is the band that best exemplifies that like that's a that's how you write a dive song and especially on is the is r but yeah this the new dive out we talked about that like that's like a very pornography, faith, which we got to give a shout to faith. That's like kind of the connoisseurs choice of a cure. Love faith.

Yeah. That's a great record. So many great records. If you haven't listened to The Cure before, what are you waiting for? I guess you're waiting for the end of this episode. But listen to The Cure once we're done here. Great, great band. We've not reached the part of our episode that we call Recommendation Corner where Ian and I talk

about something that we're into this week. Ian, once you go first. Yeah, I'll just be completely honest. I've been not listening to a lot of music this week. Just not a lot of new stuff has come out. And just after the election as well, I'm like either going with like amoral hip hop like rock Marciano or Boers of Canada. But I will give a shout up to something. You know, this is Recommendation Corner.

We engage with all culture. I saw on Friday a movie called Rap World. It is 55 minutes long and it's still a movie. It's like when a band makes an 18 minute. working, he's like, no, this is an album, not an EP. It is on Connor O'Malley's YouTube channel, and Conor O'Malley did stand-up solutions early this year. It was kind of a conceptual stand-up comedy special, which I thought was fucking hilarious. So the premise of this movie is that him and his three friends, they live in Toby Hanna, Pennsylvania, shout out to Stroudsburg.

They have one night to make a rap album. and it just goes into their trying and failing to make a rap album. And I must stress this, it is happening in 2009. There is a lot of really incredible musical cues and fashion choices that are Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, circa 2009. And it's just like a comedy. It's like not a comedy that tries to make a point about anything. It's just a comedy that is meant to be hilarious and it achieves that end.

I don't want to just say, oh, if you need something, take your mind off what's going on. I would have told you to watch this even if Kamala Harris won. But this is like easily the funniest movie of the year. So, and you can watch it for free. It's on Conor O'Malley's YouTube page called The Rap World. I love stand-up solutions as well. Very, very funny. I haven't seen this yet.

I've heard people talking about it and it looks really good. So I will use your recommendation as an excuse. to dive into that. Like Ian said, there really isn't a whole lot of new music out this week. So I want to talk about a book in the middle of reading right now. That actually came out several years ago, and I stupidly have not read it until now. And I'm reading it, and I'm really, really enjoying it. It's called Writing with the Ghost, and it's a biography of the late great singer-songwriter Jason

Molina of Songs, Ohio, and Magnolia Electric Company. this book is written by one of my favorite rock writers right now, Aaron Osmond. She actually wrote a 33 and a third book about the first John Prine record that I really enjoyed. She's currently working on a book about Heartland Rock, so that's obviously going to be at my alley. But this book is the best thing I think I've written. I'm sorry, this is the best book I have read from Aaron Osman yet. And, you know, again, it's a biography of this. of this artist who in his time

certainly had an audience but was not hugely successful and he's just another example of someone who dies young, I think he passed away when he was 39, who ends up having the second life as a cult hero after

his death and in 2024 his music seems more relevant than ever. I mean if you listen to indie rock, particularly on I guess the more sure to old countryish side, you're seeing lots of people who are influenced by Jason Molina. It's funny because a lot of times people say, well, they sound like Neil Young.

But then you talk to these people and it's like, no, I grew up listening to Jason Molina. Like Jason Molina is the touchstone and then maybe you get to Neil Young after that. MJ Lenderman, obviously, is the most obvious example that you could probably pull as a Jason Molina acolyte, but I mean, there's many, many others. And this book is just, it's a fascinating book. It just shows what an interesting character he was. He was definitely someone who was building his own myth in real time, even when he was just going to Oberlin College in Ohio in the late 90s.

And there's a certain eerie quality to his life where you feel like his fate, as as it was, was predated pretty early on. But the storytelling is great. I love the writing. And again, it's giving me. an excuse to dive into all these records, some of which I know really well. Others, I'm just getting around to now. You know, the songs Ohio catalog. Obviously, I know the Magnolia Electric Company record. But a lot of other records I've kind of listened to a little bit, but I haven't done

deep dives on. So it's been a good excuse for that. And, you know, it's depressing music, and maybe that's appropriate for this week. So anyway, if you haven't read this book, it's fantastic. It's called Writing with the Ghost by Aaron Osman. Definitely recommend it. Yeah, Jason Molina went to Oberlin. He's not the kind of guy typically associate with that school. I mean, did him and Karen Ogo in there at the same time? That would be fascinating. It sounds like they just missed each other. But there was like a lot of indie rock going on in and around that school in the 90s. So, and Aaron writes about that in the book as well. So very interesting.

That about does it for this episode of Indycast. We'll be back with more news reviews and hashing out trends next week. And if you're looking for more music recommendations, sign up for the Indie Mix tape newsletter. You can go to uprocks.com backslash indie, and I recommend five albums per week, and we'll send it directly to your email box.