The Cure-Halo

There are only a handful of “modern” bands out there that achieved their success on such a massive but also long-term scale that with each new album they released, they were able to please their core fan base while always bringing new listeners into the fold. A few spring to mind, but not a ton: R.E.M., U2, Radiohead, Blur, The Dismemberment Plan, Death Cab For Cutie, and to a lesser extent Nada Surf (don’t snicker–they’ve done some pretty amazing things since ‘Popular’). Another of these bands would definitely be The Cure.

For every album they’ve released, there is a distinctive segment of their fan base that owes their fandom to that particular album; there are people that love the more truly “gothic” stylings of Faith, Seventeen Seconds, and Pornography, while others prefer the exploratory pop of The Head on the Door, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Disintegration, and Wild Mood Swings. For me, though, it doesn’t get any better than the unabashed straight-up guitar-pop of 1992’s Wish. Back during the apex of my Cure fanaticism (oh, eleventh grade!), I read an interesting review of the album which posited that while Disintegration was singer Robert Smith’s ode to the band’s male fans, Wish was (I’m paraphrasing here) “an open love letter to the band’s female audience.” What does that say about me? Nothing more than that I’m a well-balanced individual, I hope. But anyway, I’m not sure if I entirely agree with the assessment. I like to think of the two albums as bookends of a 4-5 year period, with Disintegration representing Smith’s stretching of his pop-craft to the breaking point within the context of a coherent thematic song cycle. Wish bookends this period by offering the same focus and purpose of Disintegration, but with tighter precision. Track lengths are shorter, melodies are brighter, and the production is less ethereal and murky. This poppy single-mindedness was so inspiring that it spilled over into the era’s outtakes and b-sides, of which ‘Halo’ is possibly the most impressive.

A classic example of “a B that shoulda been an A”, ‘Halo’ first appeared on the single for ‘Friday I’m In Love’. There’s an effortless joy to this song, from the simplicity of the lyrical sentiment equating a love interest with a member of the Heavenly host to the interwoven, layered instrumental melodies throughout. Personally, as much as I love ‘Friday I’m In Love’, ‘Halo’ stands up the most to repeated listens and probably should have at least made it onto the album, if not been selected for a single A-side.

Shopping-The Jam

I’ve recently been re-discovering my love for The Jam. For those that don’t know, The Jam were essentially the biggest punk band in the UK (back when punk “happened”). Yes, bigger than The Clash, The Sex Pistols, everybody. The trio centered around vocalist/guitarist Paul Weller, and traded in an amped-up version of the mod sounds of mid-60s London, Weller’s two main songwriting influences at the time being Ray Davies of The Kinks and Pete Townshend of The Who. However, by the time they broke up in 1982, Weller had successfully integrated the best elements of disco, pop, R&B and soul into the band’s sound. A single b-side from around the time of the band’s swansong, The Gift, ‘Shopping’ is a fantastic testament to just how far he’d come, both as a songwriter, melodicist, and synthesizer of styles.

The song is essentially a musical re-working of Charles Mingus’ classic ‘Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat’. Lyrically, the song deals with the frustration of trying to become (and subsequently stay) fashionable. Taken at face value, the boredom and exasperation of walking from shop window to shop window in search of the perfect ensemble and accoutrements is clever, but not particularly interesting. However, in the context of when the song was written, as Weller was struggling with the decision to continue making gobs of money fronting what was by then one of the most successful pop acts in the UK (only Queen and The Police were bigger) or to divest himself of the responsibility of remaining fashionable in the eyes of his fans and critics and stretch out even further musically, there’s a lot of conflict and soul-searching here. And the best part of the song is the playing; Weller and bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler don’t sound like amateurish punks aping jazz stylings–they sound like jazz pros aping pop structure.

While ‘Shopping’ isn’t really indicative of The Jam’s overall style, it’s an intriguing curio and the perfect b-side: it exemplifies creative exploration paired with pop precision, and is a great supplement to the latter-day albums in the band’s catalog.