The Song Remains The Same (well almost)

Ask anybody with more than a passing interest in the history of British popular music to name a song by The Cure and there's a good chance they'll say: "The Love Cats," "In Between Days," or possibly "Friday I'm In Love," - songs that were released 25 years ago, 23 years ago and 16 years ago respectively.

The Cure no longer occupy a place at the front of the British record buying public's thoughts and yet to fans of the band they remain as important now as they did nearly thirty years ago when John Peel first championed them on his Radio One show. One of my all-time favourite radio moments was hearing John Peel play the bands track "Jumping on Someone Else's Train," which features the drums imitating the sound of a train passing over points, Peel was so impressed by the sound that he lifted the needle at the end of the song and placed it back on the album, hitting the drum sound at exactly the right spot, "I wish I had that luck on the football pools," he observed, "I wouldn't have to spend the evenings with the likes of you again," it was a moment of priceless radio.

Anyway this week sees the release of the bands thirteenth studio album in their thirty two year career - hardly the most prolific of recording bands it's also the first new work to be released in four years. 4:13 Dream finds the band back at their most romantic, dreamy and, almost, best - it's an album that could have been released in the eighties to critical acclaim and should find itself worming its way into the sub conscious of everyone of the bands followers. If you haven't listened to a Cure track since the halcyon days of Love Cats etc then you could be mistaken for thinking that the band haven't evolved at all, that would be a mistake because they undoubtedly have. The real success of The Cure lies in the fact that like flares, tank tops and the Conservative Party they have changed just enough for the vagaries of fashion to reclaim them as something new and exciting.

I criticised Oasis the other week for constantly travelling the same musical path and it would be easy to level the same criticism at Robert Smith's band, the difference between the two is, in my humble opinion, that The Cure are constantly and consistently referencing themselves. In an era where, socially, alienation is once more on the agenda it's refreshing to find the jangly guitars of the 1980's (think The Smiths, Joy Division, Durutti Column and of course The Cure) are once again ringing loud and proud from the speakers.