Daily Jam - The Same Deep Water as You

Nothing like a little music from The Cure on a Sunday morning.  Try not to despair and listen to "The Same Deep Water as You" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - One Hundred Years

Eyeing the middle of next week when my work schedule goes from being ludicrously busy to just ridiculously busy.  In the meantime, here's and all-timer from The Cure.  Listen to "One Hundred Years" below, our Daily Jam.

The Cure - A Fragile Thing

Here's another new track from the upcoming new album from The Cure, "Songs of a Lost World."  Listen to "A Fragile Thing" below and order the record here.

The Cure - Alone

The Cure dropped a new single today called "Alone."  And it's fucking great.  They also announced new record "Songs of a Lost World" out on November 1st.  Check out the new tune below and pre-order the record here.

Daily Jam - Close to Me

Back in March, my wife won tickets for us to see Sunny Day Real Estate perform "Diary" in its entirety.  It was awesome.  And opening for them was fellow '90s emo band The Get Up Kids...a band i had not thought about since their heyday in said '90s.  Here they are covering The Cure.  Listen to "Close to Me" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - The Figurehead

This column was originally published in January of 2018...which honestly feels like a fucking lifetime ago.

So, 2018 huh? We’re barely a week into this new year, and so far we’ve had some Youtube star (a person I had never heard of until last week) film and post video of the body of a person who had hanged himself, all with running commentary and snark, the POTUS inch us ever closer to nuclear war over a dick measuring contest with a foreign dictator on Twitter, snow in Florida, and the ever present and ongoing fracturing and dismantling of our Republic. We live in continued dire times, each successive year further embodying the “hold my beer” meme ethos of what came before. You thought 2017 was scary, well check this out.

Dire times indeed. And quite possibly cataclysmic times on the horizon.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to put The Cure into my earspace on repeat for the foreseeable future. It made me feel better when I was a frightened and confused teenager, so maybe it will do the trick again as terrified and neurotic adult.

It’s worth a shot, right?

I was probably 14 or 15 when I started to paying attention to The Cure. At first, I wrote the band off, their 1992 single “Friday I’m in Love” playing like muriatic acid against my eardrums. I hated that song, and hated The Cure because of it. Even now, as a full-on Robert Smith devotee, I would smile if I never had to hear that song ever again for the rest of my life. Peace be with me. And because of all this, I was skeptical of the band’s music, despite a good friend’s encouragement to check them out. My change of heart started in 1994 when I heard “Burn” from soundtrack to The Crow. Say what you will about the film, but that soundtrack is fire and that opening tune is a killer. From there, my continued foray further into the gloom began in earnest with the 1993 live album Paris. Opening with the 1-2 punch of “The Figurehead” and “One Hundred Years,” I was floored by it, a smitten kitten from then on. The heartache! The anguish! The utter gloominess! There are world changing moments in personal pop culture discoveries, moments where you can almost tacitly feel your evolution as a human being picking up its stride. Those opening 15 minutes of Paris was like that for me. Naturally I moved on to Pornography next.

1982’s Pornography is a perfect album from start to finish, my very favorite from The Cure’s catalog, and “The Figurehead” is its seismic, heart wrenching centerpiece. It’s the practical definition of Gothic pop, its broken and pining lyrics screaming into an endless darkness while a cold and icy post punk melody plays beneath it, bleak and sorrowful for all eternity. The riff plays over and over again in my head, Smith’s dramatic and desperate croon echoing in my ears, the thud and pop of Lol Tolhurst’s drum beat playing like a funeral procession. It’s perfect. It’s beautiful. It’s probably going to play me out as the world ends.

So, here’s your dirge jam to begin 2018 with (or continue 2024 with), continuing this long, waking nightmare. Be kind to each other. “I will never be clean again.”

Listen to the original album version…

And here’s the live Paris version…

Zetra Covers The Cure

UK duo Zetra just dropped a cover version of The Cure's "Burn" for our listening pleasure.  Giving it a whirl now, and it makes me wish the band would go ahead and just cover the entirety of "The Crow" soundtrack to go along with it.  Check it out below and download it here from Nuclear Blast.

Daily Jam - Jewel (Robert Smith Mix)

Here's Robert Smith's extended mix of the Cranes' "Jewel" for our Daily Jam.  Have a good Sunday everybody.

Daily Jam - A Strange Day

And now for a track from my favorite Cure album.  Listen to "A Strange Day" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Charlotte Sometimes

Here's some appropriately gloomy music from The Cure for a gray and rainy morning here in Central Texas.  Listen to "Charlotte Sometimes" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam (October Edition) - Fear of Ghosts

Dig on some spooky vibes from The Cure with the B-side cut "Fear of Ghosts," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Cold

I may have summer beer on the mind, but winter sounds are filling my ears.  Here's The Cure's "Cold," our Daily Jam.

Xiu Xiu and Chelsea Wolfe Cover The Cure

I posted about the latest from Xiu Xiu a couple months back when "OH NO," a duets album, was announced.  Well, the album's out now, and it's a dark and tangled thing featuring vocals from artists like Grouper's Liz Harris, Liars' Angus Andrew, Sharon Van Etten, Twin Shadow, and more.  A track i was particularly excited to hear is a cover of The Cure's "One Hundred Years" featuring vocals by Chelsea Wolfe which you should most definitely listen to below.  The artists turn the angsty and anguished goth song into an angsty and anguished industrial hybrid of sorts.  It rules.  Check it out and grab the record here from Polyvinyl.

Gorillaz and Robert Smith

Well, it looks like the "Song Machine" project that Gorillaz started earlier this year is going to be culminating into an album next month.  And along with that announcement, the group has released the latest track from the project, "Strange Timez," featuring Robert Smith.  I've got to admit, it's pretty cool hearing both Smith's and Albarn's voices together.  Check out the video below, and be on the lookout for physical release information hopefully sooner than later.

Daily Jam - Plainsong

Perhaps the most overtly dramatic opening to an album ever, here's The Cure's "Plainsong" from their magnum opus, our Daily Jam.