Heart of a Punk - Soul of a Rasta

Pictures Of You - Cure Covers

First off I must admit I don't think I have one of these tracks by The Cure - No that's come out wrong what am I saying?! How could I review this CD if that was the case? Let me try again. There is ONE of these cover versions I don't think I have the original Cure version of, but I have heard this missing item plenty of times so, I've just been waiting for it to turn up in our local charity shop, then it shall be mine. Also (sorry to be a nit picking MF but) with the exception of perhaps two or three of the songs included here these would not necessarily be the tracks I'd have chosen to be covered. The choice is a little on the predicable side and well I think Bigot has already covered the choice of artists.

Robert Smith introduces the CD and is to the point, I don't think he leaves anything out. He states clearly that you need to ask yourself three things before you do a cover, if you want it to be successful.

1/ has the original song inspired you?
2/ is your method good or is the way you intend to tackle the cover sound?
3/ does it work - is it worth listening to again & again?

The "Accuracy" of Mr Smith's words is quite obviously unassailable. But did he pass these wise words on to the bands? If he did then some of them took not a blind bit of notice.

So let us start at the beginning with Track 11 and The Futureheads version of the "The Lovecats". The Futureheads presumably gravitated towards this track realising it could be adapted to fit their brand of garage band quick tempo changes and punky close harmonies. Or perhaps they just liked the track, either way we are in safe hands here. The cathartic experience of their 2nd album, when they attempted to move their music on discarding most of what was good about album 1 in the process, and the soul searching that followed, has made The Futureheads aware of who and what they are and what the "futurehead sound & style" is. (This "awareness of self" can sometimes elude an artist throughout their entire career). So with "The Lovecats" they have comprehensively shaken out all The Cure and all the "jazz cat thing" of the original, and have replaced it with a great big dollop Futureheads. We end up with something different and something worth listening to again & again, if only for the sake of hearing a North East accent say "mices". Hey I did it, and without mentioning "Hounds of Love" - d'oh!

Now I must confess I'd never heard of Alkaline Trio. And listening to their version of "Cut Here" I would never "imagined" that these "three boys" hailed from the other side of muddy mire. In fact prior to being enlightened by listening to their own material, on the evidence of "Cut Here" alone, I'd have placed this trio in the North West of England. They sound like Echo & the Bunnymen does The Cure, but in the best possible way.
Cut Here is about the premature death of Smith's friend and Associates singer Billy McKenzie. Did the Alkaline Trio know prior recording Cut Here how intensely personal the subject matter of the song was? Of course we are not going to be told in the NME blurb, they haven't got time or the inclination. But whether they knew the story of the song prior to covering it or not they certainly infuse their version with sufficient emotion and strum their acoustic guitars with sufficient surety to make it for me easily the most pleasant surprise on the CD. In the absence of Ian McCulloch doing a version I will just have to keep on playing this one.

So from the sublime to Lostprophets and their simplistic reworking of "Boys Don't Cry". I think that Wales is slightly nearer to the USA than Crawley but that surely does not excuse this! The first word of Boys Don't Cry, Lostprophets is "I" not "HIGHWOOD" - half way through I had that horrible sick feeling in my stomach that there would be Wo oo ing before they were through, there was oh God please no.

British Sea Power lead us away from the oil strewn troubled waters that has preceded them and serve us up a wonderful version of "A Forest". And not only that, they are also able to do a remarkable trick, after the longest of drum roll intros they slowly set about morphing "A Forest" magically into "Sunrise" by New Order from the Low-Life album a truly remarkable - if I'm right! It seems there is still a part of every bass player that wants to be Peter Hook - if only for a day.

Now I have a long list of band's I have no time for, so don't be offended if you happen to be an Editors fan, just tell yourself your gain is my loss. This aside musically the Editors crank up "Lullaby" wonderfully well and lend it a worthy amount of gravitas in their musical rendering. Where it sadly fails for me is in the vocal delivery, Tom Smith seems to shy away from his usual full blown Ian Curtis impersonation and is unable to recreate anything to mimic or revise the claustrophobic vocal of Robert Smith's original. He should have perhaps gone for the full Pete Murphy or Dave Vanian sample on this one. But for those who don't hear with my ears, enjoy.

Now let me give these three the coup de gras in a quick fire style. The Get Up Kids and "Close to Me". If I didn't know who was playing this I would have laid it at the door of some US "kids" who had just formed a band, bought a Green Day album and were just having a bit of fun. If The Get Up Kids have been able to make a living in the music industry for ten years plus, long may their luck hold. And not pausing for breath Metronomy with "Fascination Street" ditto. If this is worthy, interesting, ground breaking, amusing, thought provoking, or just any good I'm Swiss (PS I'm not Swiss) - it is just horrible. And finally The Big Pink with a (version ?) of "Love Song". Perhaps they needed to be elsewhere and only had five minutes to produce this or maybe its just lazy, lazy one dimensional silliness. Sorry, I was.

Now you know why we usually only review what we like. I'm starting to sound decidedly grumpy and decidedly old - the control room has just told me in my ear piece that this is because in fact I am, both!

Then against all my negative preconceptions the Dandy Warhols stamp, yes I mean stamp, stomp, and bash out a splendiferous version of my favourite Cure single "Primary". There's little else to be said all three of Mr Smith's prerequisites can be ticked, underscored and ticked again.

Mystery Jets & Esser have the honour of being the opening track on the CD and do what is actually a cracking good job of tackling "In Between Days" changing the scan of the vocals and reducing the keyboard riffs to the basic tech sound of early Depeche Mode. It is all in the mix here, and what they do is make all the right choices in the flow and punctuation, you could easily imagine the original being made over in this way. I like, but where is the bass line?
One thing to remember about In Between Days, never ask Robert Smith about the animated socks in the video! Someone did it once - I'd never seen such anger before or since.

For me the Marmaduke Duke offering is the biggest disappointment on the CD; they do a great version of the advert fluff fodder that is "Friday I'm in Love", giving it a bit more bollocks with a power chorded chorus and a great deadpan delivered vocal, but what ruins the whole piece is the snare roll which punctuates though out. Wonderfully acoustic sounding yes, but it's just too loud in the mix! Detractingly so. OK if you tell me Lee Scratch Perry produced the track then the snare drum roll is a work of genius - but if not. Punch the guy on the desk, quite hard.

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly who close the compilation, did not intend to hurt anyone in their covering of "In Between Days", so light in construction this musical confection may if not fly be blow skyward by the merest zephyr. It is what it is, no apologies needed, the harmonies have the desired level of quality and the playing is tight crisp and precise. You can only like it.

Who have I missed, oh yeah, Dinosaur Jr. "Just Like Heaven" apparently let's rock - it would be rude not to. If Dinosaur Jr had been unable do a decent cover of The Cure what hope would there have been for anyone else, they've spent years snacking on Cure material and then regurgitating onto their own plate. And a decent cover is what we get, rock thankfully with more than one dimension, not my cup of tea maybe but then we drink coffee over here. The sudden ending al………………

Finally I leave the last till best (that's what I meant to say). "Catch" played by the loveable one trick ponies Art Brut. They make this cover version thing seam easy peasey. You may have thought that starting off with such a defined style the Brutes had painted themselves into a corner on day one, oh no. When it comes to doing a cover version having a well defined style pays dividends, for one thing you don't have to struggle to wrestle ownership of the song off the originator.
After the tuning is dispensed with, the music begins, the singer (sings?) and it is immediately an Art Brut song, a melodica reinforces the refrain and a thrash of guitars help the unswerving narration along. The correct level of whimsy is reached. As the song reaches its climax Eddie Argos inserts some of his own lyrics from "Emily Kane" great touch. But that would mean he did catch her name. I'm confused.

So what are the scores on the doors: was it worth £2.30?
Yes. There are five or so tracks well worth parting with money for and a few tolerable near misses also. So now can we listen to some Cure?

Cure competition:
Listen to the clips - got them all? There are no tricks it is as simple as it seems. Send the answers through to us on our email, listed 1-14. If there is no more than one entry (which is likely) you'll automatically win either the NME CD or The Cure "A Single" twin pack from '82 you choose. If there's more than one entry we will do something honourable - this isn't Blue Peter.
Don't understand the rules just enter anyway!