The Cure

When a band gets to be as truly worshipped as The Cure, it can be an interesting and slightly bizarre thing to look at their early days. A little bit like seeing your favourite actor wondering whether they’re going to go with white or brown bread in a local Tesco. Or an important politician spotted zoning out on public transport, it brings them back down to earth and reminds you that they’re not all-conquering, all-powerful cosmically divine extra-dimension visitors who know the secrets of the universe, but a guy from the Sussex suburbs who formed a band to play at a school concert.

They probably looked ridiculous at their first shows, and not in the awesome way. They probably wrote some godawful songs. Some punters probably watched an early incarnation of The Cure and thought, for good reason, that they were a bunch of no-hopers. Every band has those days and if they haven’t one should be very, very suspicious of them. What makes The Cure so special is that they absolutely had those days, but knowing about them doesn’t take the sheen off them at all. They’re still a vitally important band, influential to thousands of bands the world over and that’s enough to make them legends, before the image and before the imitators.

And it all began with a school concert. In April 1973, five students from Notre Dame Middle School in Crawley formed Obelisk, the first tentative musical project of one Mr Robert Smith, who was the bands pianist. Future Cure cohorts Mick Dempsey and Lol Tolhurst backed him up on guitar and percussion, respectively, but it wasn’t until 1976 that the trio began to take making music more seriously. The band was reshuffled to feature Smith on the guitar, Dempsey on bass and Tolhurst left the now renamed Malice, but it was only to last a year until their lead guitarist left as well.

The remaining members got Tolhurst back as their drummer and renamed themselves again.This time, they would be called Easy Cure. By September 1977, Smith took over lead vocals after several unsuccessful auditions and by the start of 1978, they had dropped the Easy from their name and had recorded their first demo tape. This tape found its way to Polydor Records scout Chris Parry, who was so taken with the band that he signed them to his own label Fiction in September of that very year. In a move that nobody would get away with now, their track “Killing An Arab” was released soon after as their very first single.

It was a move that gained as much acclaim as controversy, to the extent that a re-release of the single had to be packaged with a sticker on the cover denying its supposedly racist connotations. Thankfully, the bands energetic post-punk got more attention, and their hype was considerably heightened with a session on John Peel’s legendary Radio One show. By the following year, their debut album “Three Imaginary Boys”, was released, and as part of its promotion, the band embarked on their first major support tour opening for Siouxsie And The Banshees.

This was to be a major step forward for the band, as Smith was coaxed into playing guitar for The Banshees after their original axe-man left shortly before the tour. The experience of being a Banshee profoundly changed Smith’s attitude towards the music that his band played, and when before he was most influenced by The Buzzcocks and Elvis Costello, afterwards he wanted to match the power that he felt while playing Siouxsie’s music. The result was 1980’s “Seventeen Seconds” and arguably, that was when they became The Cure that we know today.

Since then, they’ve been most known for essentially creating Goth music with the aforementioned record, its follow up “Faith”, and 1982’s bleak masterpiece “Pornography”. However, after those records they released some of the most romantic, beautiful and downright succesful pop of the 1980’s and early 90’s, with albums like “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me”, “Wish” and “The Top” showing just what Smith could do with a lovelorn lyric and a truly gorgeous melody. It’s their mastery of these two extremes that really show why The Cure are as loved as they are. They exemplify the human condition, and reflect when one is ecstatic and when one is at their lowest with equal skill and sensitivity.

There’s no-one else like them, and it’ll be a while before we see their likes again. See this band as soon as possible.

The origins of their name come from a line in The War Poems by British poet Wilfred Owen, which reads "Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad." MacFarlane and Graham formed the band after meeting in high school whilst original member Craig Ozrel was invited to become a member after a chance encounter at a bus stop. They have cited artists such as Daniel Johnston, Serge Gainsbourg, Phil Spector, Arab Strap, and Leonard Cohen as major influences to their indie/folk sound.

They released their first album as a group in 2007 and it was titled 'Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters'. It was produced by guitarist Andy MacFarlane and mixed by Peter Katis, with the whole album being recorded from start to finish in just three days. The collection features some of the band's earliest works and writing. It was not a chart success in any sense yet it was hailed by critics and gained the band notoriety and attention. The following albums have all slowly increased their chart position as the trio's reputation has grown. 'Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave' which was released in 2014 peaked at #51 on the UK Album Charts.

'Nobody Wants to Be Here and Nobody Wants to Leave' holds an impressive score of 82/100 on MetaCritic after receiving rave reviews from publications including Q Magazine, Clash and Drowned In Sound. With huge acclaim and a growing fan base, the band have enjoyed touring their melancholic tones around the world, they recently performed their debut album in its entirety during special dates at Rough Trade in New York.

Formed by childhood friends Ritzy Bryan and Rhydian Dafydd after they played together in the Manchester based rock band Tricky Nixon, The Joy Formidable came together in 2007 after Bryan and Dafydd drafted Justin Stahley in to play the drums one their own project, which at the time was unnamed. After the trio realized the chemistry they had together when performing live, the band named themselves The Joy Formidable, and after a year of rehearsing, recording and writing together, they released “Austere”, their first single, in July 2008. After they put a Christmas single up for download on their website at the end of 2008, the band self-released their first extended play “A Balloon Called Moaning” in January 2009, which was when they really started to get glowing noticed in the national music press.

Not only did the record get the band noticed in the United Kingdom, but also in the United States after it was re-released on Passion Pit's synth player Ayad Al Adhamy's label Black Bell Records. Because of this, the band were able to sign a record deal with Canvasback Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic, in 2010. The band's debut album “The Big Roar”, was hailed as a triumph by those who heard it, including some nobody called Dave Grohl, who called its third single “Whirring” his song of the year. The band released their second album “Wolf's Law” in January 2013 and to this day, the band remain the most collosal sounding rock band since Muse. With a live show that's just as epic, and the world at their feet, The Joy Formidable come highly recommended.