Cure Debut Gets First North American Release!

Zach Vowell & Chris Rediske report:
Though The Cure did in fact release an album this year-- which, at this late point in their career is but a quadrannual event-- 2004 is much more likely to go down in history as the year when they began looking actively backwards. It started in January, with the long-promised and finally delivered B-sides set Join the Dots, a four-disc affair that collected most, if not all, of The Cure's copious b/w's (until several months later, when they released the single for "The End of the World", with two unreleased tracks). So what, then, is the next logical step for a band with 10+ studio albums? Can you see this coming? The reissue! As we've been telling you for some time, The Cure will be reissuing a large chunk of their back catalog, and their debut album Three Imaginary Boys leading the pack.

As Three Imaginary Boys has inexplicably never been released in the U.S. (the 1980 Fiction/PVC release Boys Don't Cry does contains some of it, suffused with the band's singles of the period), this is pretty damn cool news. Even cooler is that the band (read: Robert Smith) has managed to dig up a full disc's worth of rare and unreleased demos and live tracks for the "deluxe" edition, which is scheduled for release on December 7th via Geffen, after being pushed back from August of this year.

Given the band's predilection for releasing most of their studio output via either albums or B-sides, it may not come as a big surprise that the majority of the tracks are demos of one sort or another (some full band, some just Smith). But, all told, the bonus Rarities 1977-1979 disc will include 15 songs unavailable in a proper digital format, six of which have never been released at all. Another curiosity of the rarities set is that the first half (which dates from 1977-78) features the guitar talents of then-future (and now-past again) band member Porl Thompson.

The set also boasts digital remastering job by Chris Blair, who has overseen the technical mastering for such luminaries as Genesis, The Alan Parsons Project, Kate Bush, Spiritualized, and Radiohead, as well as 16 pages of liner notes written by Johnny Black, who performed the same duty on Join the Dots. For those who have meticulously tracked The Cure's evolving visual style over the years, the sleeve notes are furthered enhanced by rare and previously unpublished photos from none other than Robert Smith's personal collection. Tracklist:

>>Disc 1: Three Imaginary Boys
01 10:15 Saturday Night
02 Accuracy
03 Grinding Halt
04 Another Day
05 Object
06 Subway Song
07 Foxy Lady
08 Meathook
09 So What
10 Fire in Cairo
11 It's Not You
12 Three Imaginary Boys
13 The Weedy Burton

>>Disc 2: Rarities 1977-1979
01 I Want to Be Old (demo - previously unreleased)
02 I'm Cold (demo - previously unreleased)
03 Heroin Face (live)
04 I Just Need Myself (demo - previously unreleased)
05 10:15 Saturday Night (demo - previously unreleased)
06 The Cocktail Party (demo - previously unreleased)
07 Grinding Halt (demo - previously unreleased)
08 Boys Don't Cry (demo)
09 It's Not You (demo - previously unreleased)
10 10:15 Saturday Night (demo - previously unreleased)
11 Fire in Cairo (demo - previously unreleased)
12 Winter (studio outtake - previously unreleased)
13 Faded Smiles (studio outtake - previously unreleased)
14 Play With Me (studio outtake - previously unreleased)
15 World War
16 Boys Don't Cry
17 Jumping Someone Else's Train
18 Subway Song (live)
19 Accuracy (live - previously unreleased)
20 10:15 Saturday Night (live - previously unreleased)

And finally, The Cure are preparing to release two new singles from their latest self-titled effort, with "alt.end" being tagged for the U.S., and "Taking Off" for Europe. They've also filmed two new videos for each of the songs, with the video for "Taking Off" having already been made available for download at their official website. The two singles, however, will share the same B-sides-- the uncleverly titled "Why Can't I Be Me?", and the decidedly bumperstickery "Your God Is Fear". Meanwhile, the reissues of The Cure's next three albums-- Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography-- are tentatively scheduled for early next year.