However much I desperately attempt to avoid being swept by the ebbing of an NME tide, never before have Robert Smith and his troupe of miserablist outcasts featured so prevalently in my every waking thought. Having wished and hope to one day catch The Cure live, last Thursday one of the more realistic branches of the wish tree was set ablaze by Smith's sneering yet inherently tender and hopeless surrender to love, or lack, at NME's Big Gig. Picking holes in the corporate destruction that was smeared all over the event would be as elementary as reeling a list of 25 bands White Lies wish they were. Where The Cure succeed and White Lies fall, for me, is lyrically; the West London three-piece tend to focus somewhat allegorically on the fears that surround death and loss whereas Smith has the infintely enviable knack of impeccably expressing love. No other lyricist this side of Roy Orbison and Elvis Costello seems to have recognised the entirely fickle nature of love and the power it can hold over whoever it grasps. But The Cure could never slip into the clichéd powerballadry of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and other such 80s throw-away chancers cowering behind synths only found today on records from the likes of The Bravery and the Rev. John McClure. For 30-odd years Smith has addressed his fear and loathing of the most affecting and ultimately brutal of human emotions head on, recounting tales of the joys of finding and bitter disappointment at then losing seemingly every love interest he's ever encountered.Whilst he may not be the most aesthetically desirable 'boy' to ever pout behind a low-slung guitar (neither my girlfriend and my mum admit they'd go in for the birds nest hair and splattering of ill-applied lipstick), irrelevant NME achievement awards aside he's still just as influential and quintessentially British as he, and The Cure ever were. The utterly human individuals behind the collective add to the personal informality employed by Smith and it's his disregard for fads and trends that set him apart as perhaps the definite frontman. From minimalist experimental blips of 'Close to Me' to the freeform genre-hopping 'Lovecats' favourites seamlessly cement their way into that most played list on the iPod and whilst the Greatest Hits is, at times, incomprehensibly diverse and slightly hit and miss, they always have been and always will be as true a testament to music as these shores could ever hope to produce.
Marmaduke Duke- Friday I'm In Love
The Cure- Just Like Heaven (Acoustic)
Dream In Flashes
