Hometown: Crawley, England
Year Formed: 1976

Personnel:
Robert Smith -vocals, guitar, 6-string bass, keyboards
Simon Gallup -bass
Perry Bamonte -guitars, 6-string bass
Jason Cooper -drums, percussion
Roger O'Donnell -keyboards

Bands In The Family:
Malice, Siouxsie and the Banshees

Notes:
You could say that Robert Smith was always musically inclined, having received his first guitar at the age of 13 and taking to it instantly. Before The Cure, there was Malice, a group that Smith and two other classmates from school, Lawrence Tolhurst and Michael Dempsey, put together in 1976, performing David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix covers. At the time, Smith refused to sing because he felt that his voice was not good enough. Eventually, they renamed themselves Easy Cure (after a song written by Tolhurst) and then finally The Cure in 1978. By this time, the band had acquired Porl Thompson on guitar and Peter O'Toole on vocals. The quintet played numerous local spots, but after Peter left the band, it was up to Robert to provide the vocals. The Cure went on the perform in a local talent contest where they were spotted by a producer from Polydor Records and signed shortly thereafter. After a 1978 Peel Session, their debut LP, Three Imaginary Boys, came out in 1979. During this time, Smith was also acting as stand-in guitarist with Siouxsie and the Banshees. For a brief period in 1983, Smith actually left the band to play solely with the Banshees but then rejoined The Cure in '84. Over two decades of recording music the band has seen numerous breakups and rearrangements, with Smith the only surviving original member.

There is a strange comfort in sadness. It's the mood that envelops you in its velvety clutches where it's far more soothing not to struggle. And why would you really want to? Sometimes there's more beauty to be found in despair than in happiness, and The Cure's familiarity with the darker side of the light has provided us with yet another excuse to revel in depression.

On Bloodflowers, The Cure's twentieth album to date, the masters of melancholy have spawned another soundtrack for all of life's heartaches - crooning through nine richly developed tracks with a hopeless conviction. And yet, their disparaging wails and hums are strangely magnetic: a steady beacon pulsating through the shadows.

The disc's first single, "Maybe Someday," is probably the most radio-friendly of the collection, with its swanky keyboards surrounding an emblematic chorus of lost emotion and shattered hope. But other musical gems season the album with a sweetly sour "The Last Day Of Summer" followed by the haunting "The Loudest Sound."

Considered by some to be the patriarchs of classic Goth, The Cure continue to amplify the beauty in pain with this bouquet of bloodflowers - succeeding in making the art of sadness fashionable once again.

If you like The Cure, check out:
The Cure Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
Depeche Mode Violator
Tricky Juxtapose
Econoline Crush The Devil You Know

-- Johanna Ravich