Month: April 2020

Tidal Catalog #39: The Cure

Introduction: For those of you that have stumbled across this website and are interested in reading about my trek through the universe of the Tidal streaming service, let me tell you a bit about what I did. Back in 2016 I thought it would be kind of cool to listen to an artist’s catalog from start to finish and rank them from best to worst. After all, who doesn’t like a good list? I thought I might do a few of them and see what happened, hoping it would introduce me to records that were foreign to me in the arsenal of an artist I was familiar with. I also thought that it would be pretty cool to get out of the “one off” mode of listening to a new record, years after the previous one, in order to get a true sense of how the artist matured over time. Fast forward to June of 2019 and 250 catalogs later, I ended the trek. I posted these all on Facebook over the years as they were completed but I’m going to move them all over here, starting with #1, in order to expand them out a bit more. Facebook doesn’t exactly allow for too many details.

As with all my catalogs, to be considered in the ranking, an album has to meet certain criteria:

  • The artist must actually perform on 80% of the tracks (soundtrack and rap provision)
  • No compilations of previous released material will be included.
  • However, compilations of previously recorded material will be included if they are remixes, bonus tracks, outtakes… mostly music that hasn’t been part of a main release before.
  • The album must have been released officially and within the realm of the label that the artist would have been on at the time or official releases posthumously (normally applies to a slew of live records)
  • Any EPs must contain new new music and be relevant to the catalog, not be more like a single with a b-side or two.

Entrance Point: The Cure are one of my favorite bands of all time, so I had heard all of their material before. This catalog was basically just an excuse to listen to them again.

Not Included: Boys Don’t Cry – which was a compilation of their first album and a few other one off tracks as their first album wasn’t released in the states. But thanks to the digital age, it’s available in the U.S. now, so I didn’t include this version. Entreat is also not included as it was a live album released only in the UK (France only at first) and thus not actually widely available)

All albums ranked on a 10 scale:

  • Disintegration (10)

There’s no better album in the history of Goth rock than this one. The Cure already had hits leading up to this 1989 gem but this make them reluctant superstars. “Lovesong” “Fascination Street” and “Lullaby” are all fantastic tunes but really, every track on this disc is. This record was the soundtrack to one of the oddest times of my life – the year I went to private school and sat next to two goth kids, including one dude who style and hair mimicked Robert Smith’s completely. Both of the kids were very weird and total assholes and one day the Smith clone came into school with a knife and started threatening people. He ended up getting expelled within a few days and that was it but I will always tie this album back to that memory and yet, I still love it. Funny how these things work sometimes.

  • The Head on the Door (9.5)

The Head on the Door was the album that gave the Cure their first Hot 100 hit in the US, with “In Between Days” peaking at #99! Okay, so “hit” is a relative term there but this was their first real taste of success in the US. This album stands out to me because it’s consistently upbeat. That doesn’t mean the lyrics are all about kittens and roses but musically, it’s not nearly as gloomy as much of their material and it’s very consistent in quality. Robert Smith was listening to Elvis Costello and the Psychedelic Furs at the time and that influence shows in what’s simply a great pop record. (It’s regularly labeled as post-punk, which I don’t necessarily agree with). The second and final single, “Close To You” is as bright and sunny as they had been up until that point (and until “Friday I’m in Love”), the Spanish arrangement on “The Blood” is a fantastic twist and the one truly post-punk track (“Screw”) is led by an awesome bass line.

  • Bloodflowers (9.5)

Despite loving Disintegration so much, I think Bloodflowers is the album I’ve listened to the most in my lifetime. This was released about a week after my 24th birthday in 2000 and maybe six months after I graduated college. I remember getting this record and laying on my Mom’s sofa feeling quite emotional about this one. At the time, this was billed as the final Cure record as evidenced as quickly as the opening words of the first track, “Out of this World,” “When we look back at it all as I know we will / You and me, wide eyed / I wonder/ Will we really remember how it feels to be this alive?” There’s an overall somber mood to the record and wandering passages over the course of nine songs that average more than six minutes in length. It’s hard to explain in words but it definitely has the feel of a band making an exit. Of course four years later they put out a new record so it’s a moot point now. Some critics at the time thought is was a lazy record from a band that had given up but I find most of these tracks to simply have some wonderful melodies and is the kind of album that you can really get kind of lost in.

  • Faith (9)
  • Pornography (8.5)
  • Wish (8.5)
  • The Cure (8)
  • The Top (8)
  • Paris (8)
  • Join the Dots (7.5)
  • Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (7.5)

Most Cure fans would consider this to be one of the classics in the catalog but it’s not in my mind. It’s definitely a good album and surely adventurous but it’s really long at 18 tracks and 75 minutes and with that, there’s a very scattered feel to the whole record. There’s a lot of really moody songs but with upbeat, horn filled tracks breaking that mood quite often. “Just Like Heaven” is one of their best pop songs but it almost seems out of place on this album. And a song like “Hot Hot Hot!!!” which is one of their most upbeat tracks but more like a late 80s Red Hot Chili Peppers song instead of the Cure, also doesn’t fit well on the record. If you take songs individually, a lot of them stand nicely alone but the lack of flow on this album is a sticking point for me.

  • Bestival Live 2011 (7.5)
  • Seventeen Seconds (6.5)
  • Mixed Up (6)
  • Concert (6)
  • Torn Down (5.5)
  • Three Imaginary Boys (5.5)
  • Show (5.5)
  • 4:13 Dream (5)
  • Wild Mood Swings (5)

If you broke down Cure records, “Wild Mood Swings” could describe many, if not all of them. Throughout their career, they have went back and forth between dreary and dreamy but it all came to a head here. The title certainly applies here as there are a bunch of upbeat tracks and a bunch of moody tunes. But there’s seemingly no rhyme or reason to the order and many of the upbeat tracks simply aren’t very good. Lead single “The 13th” is easily their worst single and one of my least favorite cure songs and “Mint Car” sounds like a B-52’s outtake rather than a Cure single. There’s quality song scattered throughout the disc but not enough to warrant any further listens.

Summary: 20 albums, average 7.3

Tidal Catalog #38: Bon Jovi

Introduction: For those of you that have stumbled across this website and are interested in reading about my trek through the universe of the Tidal streaming service, let me tell you a bit about what I did. Back in 2016 I thought it would be kind of cool to listen to an artist’s catalog from start to finish and rank them from best to worst. After all, who doesn’t like a good list? I thought I might do a few of them and see what happened, hoping it would introduce me to records that were foreign to me in the arsenal of an artist I was familiar with. I also thought that it would be pretty cool to get out of the “one off” mode of listening to a new record, years after the previous one, in order to get a true sense of how the artist matured over time. Fast forward to June of 2019 and 250 catalogs later, I ended the trek. I posted these all on Facebook over the years as they were completed but I’m going to move them all over here, starting with #1, in order to expand them out a bit more. Facebook doesn’t exactly allow for too many details.

As with all my catalogs, to be considered in the ranking, an album has to meet certain criteria:

  • The artist must actually perform on 80% of the tracks (soundtrack and rap provision)
  • No compilations of previous released material will be included.
  • However, compilations of previously recorded material will be included if they are remixes, bonus tracks, outtakes… mostly music that hasn’t been part of a main release before.
  • The album must have been released officially and within the realm of the label that the artist would have been on at the time or official releases posthumously (normally applies to a slew of live records)
  • Any EPs must contain new new music and be relevant to the catalog, not be more like a single with a b-side or two.
  • Entrance Point: I was a Bon Jovi fan. Too embarrassed to admit it back in the day but now I’ll wear my “Bad Medicine” t-shirt proudly. That said, I had stopped listening to the band after 2002s Bounce and only knew the singles past that point.

All albums ranked on a 10 scale:

  • Bon Jovi (9)

Well, it might seem weird to have Bon Jovi’s debut album in the first slot before some of the classic records and especially when Jon Bon Jovi himself has said that they weren’t even a good band until the third album but despite the 9 million hair metal cliches on this record, it’s the most consistent with the least amount of filler. It only had one minor hit in “Runaway” and certainly hasn’t stood the test of time, nor would I even recommend you go back to it to hear how they started as a band but tracks like “Breakout” and “Come Back” are real good songs. It even weirdly enough has a song called “Shot Through the Heart” which is not an older version of “You Give Love a Bad Name.” Jon must have really liked saying that.

  • Have A Nice Day (9)

1995’s These Days saw the band get rid of most of their hair metal sound and move more to straight rock, but it was 2000’s Crush that kind of moved them to a more “adult” sound and with that, they went from a band your sister loved to a band your mom loves. The best of these adult records is 2005’s Have a Nice Day. It benefits from having a pretty great lead single in the title track and follow ups “Who Says You Can’t Go Home” and “Welcome to Wherever You Are” are some of the better tracks Bon Jovi has released in the last couple decades. There’s certainly not much variety on this record as Jon wrote a dozen tracks with the same general vibe but it’s consistently good and that’s way more than I can say for most Bon Jovi records.

  • Slippery When Wet (8.5)

Slippery When Wet was much lower in my original post on Facebook but I decided to bump it up to #3 after listening to it again – I’m not 100% sure I should have but it is what it is at this. I try not to let nostalgia get in the way of the actual music and the non-singles tend to play out like filler but this damn record sold 28M copies worldwide on the basis of “You Give Love a Bad Name” “Livin’ on a Prayer” “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “Never Say Goodbye,” which are some of the greatest songs of the hair metal genre.

  • Lost Highway (7)

Lost Highway is Bon Jovi’s country record, except well, it’s not. Sure, there’s a song with LeAnn Rimes and a song with Big & Rich on here and the title track has an inkling of that crossover country appeal but that’s it, an inkling. This album is another pretty consistent rock record and if a little pedal steel and some violins make this a country record, so be it. But in all the times I’ve listened to this, I’ve never thought of it as country. I can see why it appeals to the country crowd for sure as it’s got a bit more of a laid back vibe than most Bon Jovi records even in their later period and it’s the only record from them that has this overall sound but to me, this is just a chill version of Jon and the gang.

  • New Jersey (7)
  • Bounce (6.5)
  • Keep the Faith (6)
  • Crush (6)
  • 100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong (6)
  • The Circle (5.5)
  • This House is Not For Sale (5.5)
  • One Wild Night (5)
  • Inside Out (5)
  • These Days (4)

There was once a dude named…oh, well, I don’t really know his name but he works at the record store by my house and he’s straight out of hair metal nation circa 1988 – lives and breathes the stuff. If he had said to me that he was in a third tier band like Jackyl or the Bulletboys, I wouldn’t have even thought twice about it. And at one point in 2019, I was in the store and he was playing Bon Jovi’s These Days. He started having a full conversation with another customer about how this is the best Bon Jovi record, full of great rock tunes and grunge tracks that make it clearly underrated and the most well crafted LP they have. I always think back to that conversation and wonder what he was smoking. This is a different record for sure and it’s grunge-y, trying to fit in with the era but it was also 1995, so they hit the tail end of it already. And really, the tracks are dull. They don’t have nearly the same punch as at least the hits do and thus, it all just sort of blends together. I mean, I’ve had conversations with this dude at the store before and he really knows his shit but I guess everyone is wrong sometimes. Except me. [laugh people, it’s a joke]

  • What About Now? (4)
  • This House Is Not For Sale – Live from the London Palladium (4)
  • Burning Bridges (3.5)
  • 7800 Degrees Fahrenheit (3)
  • 2020 (3)
  • This Left Feels Right (2.5)

Summary: 20 albums, average 5.5