A decade of studio work is worth looking back on. The strongest years are compiled on Galore, a compilation of The Cure’s efforts in the studio from 1987 to 1997. It does mean that Faith, Pornography, and Boys Don’t Cry are absent and sadly so, but this is a fascinating look into how the band went from being a force to be reckoned with to an oddity where hits weren’t as frequent. Wild Mood Swings is a tough pitch even to active fans of the Robert Smith-fronted band, but Galore has the guts to showcase some of its better songs. Gone! is on Galore, tucked away towards the end. The Cure shouldn’t be ashamed of Wild Mood Swings, it’s fairly good work. But they do tuck it away a little bit here. Still, Galore is an oddity itself. Pitching a compilation album that doesn’t factor in some of your best works is always a bold move.
But as a documentation of what The Cure has done in the studio over those ten years, it’s a welcome experience. You still get some outstanding songs on here that are perhaps overlooked given the bigger hits of Boys Don’t Cry and Friday I’m in Love. Only the latter is on here, and for all the imagery of the band as a gothic outfit, the opening song Why Can’t I Be You? doesn’t display that at all. As engaged with pop as the band ever got, and it works very well. Synthetic-sounding instrumental work. Not the synth itself but the drum machine, the fascination with tech that took over studios across the world with the biggest bands of the time, it all comes together here and makes for such a different listening experience. Compare it to Pornography and Seventeen Seconds and it’s a wholly different image of The Cure. A welcome change, too. Galore looks to soften the image of The Cure as a gothic band and presents them more as an alternative rock outfit, knee-deep in pop. Not to be a stickler for detail, but a compilation starting with the year 1987 should, perhaps, not feature The Head on the Door.
A brilliant album in its own way but it misses this arbitrary decade decision by two years. The label were no doubt thrilled to hear Smith and the band wanted to release a compilation of songs which weren’t going to feature earlier, established hits. Yet they seem to give in with the inclusion of Close to Me. This is not a criticism of the songs, crucially. Every song selected here is a valid choice for a compilation album but it sounds as though the band is shifting the goalposts a tad on what can and cannot be considered a highlight of their decade in the studio, particularly when some of these songs fall out of that parameter. There’s a feeling that Galore is more to supplement Wild Mood Swings than anything else. It was their most recent release at the time and there’s this hope, or at least was when compilation records could be shifted in place of music streaming playlists, that including contemporary material would place it in the same conversation as actual greats.
Few are talking about The 13th in the same breath as Just Like Heaven. Maybe they should. There’s very few reasons, if any, to now listen to Galore. A shame to say so given how great a listen it is but those albums deserve their full context and they don’t get that here. Closing with Wrong Number is just plain cool. Compare that with Why Can’t I Be You? and you do get a full picture of the band across a decade, or 12 years given the inclusion of a few The Head on the Door songs. One of the coolest bands to ever pick up an instrument and they prove as much with Galore. A compilation restricting itself to using songs from a decade where the band began to turn towards different points of reference that hardly matched up with the likes of Wish and Disintegration. Fascinating stuff as a traipse through their works, a little taster session. But you can get a much broader, better picture, from just listening to their discography.
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