THE CURE
“POST-PUNK STRANGENESS”
CHVRCHES singer and Cure collaborator LAUREN MAYBERRY celebrates 2000’s BLOODFLOWERS
TIM RONEY/GETTY IMAGES; DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES FOR HARRIS REED; CYRUS ANDREWS/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES
“A friend made me a mix CD with ‘Fire In Cairo’. I knew ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and I got into their music through the greatest hits collection. Then when I began playing in bands, I noticed that every guy in a semi-decent band had a Disintegration T-shirt, so I realised that must be the real shit. I got into that and Pornography. That’s what I loved about The Cure, that they could exist in the two different worlds. Their melodies are fantastic, great pop songs, but then there would be long songs of post-punk strangeness. When we started CHVRCHES we talked about The Cure, Eurythmics and Depeche Mode – bands that could make really weird albums that had these accessible moments. “Bloodflowers came out when I was a teenager. The Cure are about atmosphere and the way imagery is very consistent across the record. Robert is very good at building an aesthetic world within each record, and this one has a lot of songs about the natural world. One of my favourite things about The Cure is that each instrument has its own moment in each song. It’s not bringing in everything at the same time, it’s about showing patience and craft. Robert is also one of my favourite guitar players and I spent an awful lot of time trying to emulate that sound.