Cure Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978-2001

Anyone who has any doubts about the Cure's place in the great scheme of things should ask him or herself one simple question. How many other bands could even think of doing this - a four-CD, 70-song box set of non-LP b-sides and rarities, especially when only about half-a-dozen songs are previously unreleased. That any band would have enough b-sides to fill out such a set is pretty incredible. That the quality of the songs remains uniformly high throughout the first three disks, until diving headlong into an empty pool on disc 4, is outrageous.

Robert Smith's silly songs are sillier, and his sad songs are sadder, than anyone else's. That duality is the key to the Cure, who are dismissed as lightweights by some and mopers by others, neither of whom appreciate the full range of the band. If you look at them objectively, they've got to rate among the half-dozen greatest bands in the history of rock. I'd rate the Go-Betweens as the best pop band of the last quarter of the 20th Century, and the Cure as the best rock band - over U2, Nirvana, or anyone else. Even the Clash.

What Join the Dots does is to bring together all the uncollected Cure studio b-sides, and songs from film soundtracks, compilations, et. al. into one chronologically arranged package. Notice that I said studio b-sides - if you're looking for that live version of Six Different Ways or Forever, you'll have to keep on looking. For those of us who have half of these songs on scratchy singles or hiss-filled tape, the clarity of these versions is shocking. This set was put together with care and love, and the remastering sounds great, even to being able to understand the whispered vocals on Happy the Man.

That's pretty important, because of the 22 songs on CD 1, which covers 1978-1987, some remarkably creative, if unfocused, years, 17 of them were included either on the flip side of the cassette version of Staring at the Sea or on Japanese Whispers. The latter, in fact, is included in its entirety if you have this set and the CD of either Greatest Hits or Staring at the Sea. Because the sequencing is chronological, the effect is schizophrenic, but The Cure's music is that way anyway. An early flirtation with up-tempo thrashers confirms that The Cure were never really going to be a punk band, and a couple of instrumentals are moody but fairly innocuous. The Upstairs Room is an overlooked pop gem, while Throw Your Foot was admittedly recorded in an addled state that Smith recovered from, but Lol Tolhurst never did. With the chirpy tunefulness of The Exploding Boy, the flipside of Inbetween Days, everything changes. The weirdness is still there, but the band sounds confident and professional, as if Smith suddenly figured out what he was trying to do, and how to do it. In movie terms, it's The Cure's equivalent of the moment in The Wizard of Oz when everything changes from black & white to color.

CD 2 (1987-1992) and CD 3 (1992-1996) cover The Cure's glory years, when they very well could have been the best band in the world. The b-sides from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Disintegration, and surprisingly enough, Wish, are all of equal quality to the songs on the albums; in particular, the catchy Halo, and the bass-driven A Foolish Arrangement would both have been among the best tracks on Wish, had they been included. 2 Late, the b-side of Lovesong, is the gem of the entire set, the most perfect Cure pop song ever with the exception of Just Like Heaven. Smith explains in the copious liner notes that he always thought it would be a single, but that it just didn't fit into the mood of Disintegration. He's right, but it's still a crime for this song, gooey synth chords enveloping a prototypical Smith guitar line like icing on a chocolate layer cake, to have been buried on a b-side. A couple of rejected single mixes of album tracks are included, and in both cases immeasurably improve the songs. How Beautiful You Are, which always seemed to drag in its original mix, is punched up and shortened by a minute, to great effect, sparkling like a diamond cut free. On the other hand, Doing the Unstuck is extended, one of the few 12" remixes that actually improves the song, its playfulness and frivolity shining through.

You also get to hear the Cure do a few covers, with decidedly mixed results. The frantic take of the Doors' Hello I Love You works, although the Psychedelic Mix and 11-second Slight Return Mix are both superfluous. Superfluous would also be a kind word for their faithful reading of Bowie's Young Americans. Pointless would be a better one. The two versions of Hendrix' Purple Haze are both interesting, a recognizable full band version followed by a dirgelike, keyboard-drenched Smith solo version that sounds more like Third Stone From the Sun. As for World in My Eyes, it's dull and boring, but then it's a Depeche Mode cover, so that's appropriate.

Which brings us to CD 4 (1996-2001). Of the 15 tracks on that disc, exactly two are any good, Coming Up, an extra track on the Japanese version of the excellent Bloodflowers, and Signal to Noise, the flip of their 2001 single, Cut Here. While the decline in quality doesn't quite match Nigel Mansell's fall from grace with McLaren, it's pretty close. There's an eight-minute version of Wrong Number, the Cure's worst single, that makes the original mix almost palatable, and an excruciating re-make of A Forest that seems to exist only to allow guest star Earl Slick a chance for masterbatory guitar heroics.

Still, three CDs of good-to-great music is a pretty acceptable ratio, and while this is not meant for the casual Cure fan, it's an essential purchase for the hardcore ones. And of course, the probably aren't any casual Cure fans anymore.