Customer Reviews

Staring at the Sea

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What else can be said about this that hasn't already? We shall see. If there is just one album by the Cure that you could get (excluding Disintegration) by all means make this the one! This album includes a very nice array of earlier Cure material ranging from their brilliant ode to Camus (that alone makes this cd worth it) in Killing an Arab, the ironically cheerful Boys Don't Cry (oh, but they do) and the brooding atmosphere created in the Hanging Garden to the wonderful meandering of A Forest and playfully upbeat tempo created by Close to Me, brass and all, the Lovecats and of course the beutifully simplistic The Caterpillar.
There are just so many great songs on this album it is hard to describe mention them all; every track is truly a jewel, and, perhaps, most impressive is the range of emotion and subject matter that the Cure covers here, all with brilliance, wit and a graceful passion unmatched in most music that is being made today. In this collection, as with all of the Cure's material, Robert Smith's lyrics ring true and the accompanying music never fails to intensify the the mood that they evoke. The Cure are without a doubt one of the best bands to come out of the 70's and 80's and this album illustrates why. Go on go on your choice is made...

Thanks to the recent TV commercial for HP Digital cameras, I found myself really wanting to have some Cure in my life again and went looking for "Pictures Of You." Yes, at one time I had almost all the Cure CD's in my collection, but time and economics had weeded them away. "Staring At The Sea" offered me an opportunity to get a batch of other songs I remembered with fondness.

As dark and morose as The Cure's image had always been, their albums up to "The Head On The Door" frequently found them making dazzlingly brilliant singles. Hard to believe it, but Robert Smith was just as pop song smart as any New Romantic period hit maker, and in songs like "The Walk" or "Love Cats" he showed the kind of playfulness that many of his fans didn't always "get." Nonetheless, early efforts like "Killing An Arab" or "Hanging Garden" reinforced that dark depressive atmosphere that early Cure fans embraced so completely. Smith himself never had any problem with playing against preconceived notions of what a Cure song should be; I doubt a jazzy Robert ("Let's Go To Bed") was in any goth fan's must hear list.

I also found it ironic that the "Staring at the Sea" image of an old man was mirrored by the baby with the ice cream on "Galore." If you wanted to read more into it, you'd almost suspect Robert Smith was gently trying to remind listeners that he didn't mind playing to his more childlike nature when making music. While there has yet to be a comprehensive single disc collection of the Cure's best, a purchase of "Galore" and "Standing" will at least put all the singles at your fingertips.

The one reason to buy this is to have "Charlotte Sometimes" on cd. I myself own everything the cure has released but I had to buy this for that song. Charlotte Sometimes is the most dreamy and mysterious Cure song ever and I swear it puts me in a trance. It steals me away from my dreary life as a teenager with a dead end job and a so-far meaningless exisitence...sounds Cliche' huh?. Well, trust me this album is full of Cure classics but it holds the one Cure song that has a place im my heart forever. Keep an eye out for the new cure album coming...its going to be a great summer.

A great start for new fans. Definitly one of the best compilations ever. There's no weak track here. Here are my favorites.
Boys Don't Cry: the song that got me into the Cure. A must
The Hanging Garden: Gloom at its finest
The Lovecats: Totally original.
In-Between Days: The light out of the darkness.

To the November 25th review, be glad you got the cassette. It's the only way you're going to get 12 of their early b-sides, and any "Cure" fan will tell you, they are as good as the a-sides. The only advantage to the CD, besides being a CD, is that it includes a few singles that the cassette does not, specifically "10:15 Saturday Night", "Play For Today", "Other Voices", and "A Night Like This". All good songs, but I'd take the b-sides any day, and hopefully they get them all on a disc sometime. But whether you get this on cd or not, it's an excellent collection, and will go great with "Galore", their 2nd singles collection.

They sent me the tape instead - very poor service and i am really mad that they had the nerve to charge me anyway...what do i do????

Please ignore what the detractors here have said. Obviously, if it's only tuneless 11-minute goth epics you're looking for, a Cure best-of CD is not going to be your thing. Turn on "The Same Deep Water As You," inject some controlled substances, and wallow in your tears.

But for the rest of us who actually appreciate melodies as long as they aren't too commercialized, STARING AT THE SEA is an amazingly good record, and probably the best single Cure album you can buy, especially if you haven't heard much from them before ("Friday I'm in Love," although it's good, doesn't really count).

This is absolutely not an album of light and mindless pop. Songs like "The Walk," "Let's Go to Bed," and even, god forbid, "The Love Cats" all utilize drum machines and synthesizers, but they still have that dark, introspective, wintry mood that marks them as distinctly Cure. And you can't call "Close to Me" a sellout, in fact I'm amazed it was a hit at all, with such a lo-fi production style and jazz instruments rather than guitars. "Boys Don't Cry," with its punky chords, is the most mainstream song on the compilation, but the lyrics are as mopey as anything Smith ever wrote. The only annoying silly pop tune on the CD is "The Caterpillar," but even that hardly sounds like typical top 40 material.

Everything else fits perfectly into Robert Smith's beautifully bleak landscape of romantic/Romantic yearning. Listen to classics like "A Forest" and "A Night Like This." You can just imagine the wide snowy expanses, the moonless nights and depressing city lights, people just looking for someone, anyone to share their pain. This music is as evocative and cinematic as any ever made.

It's the combination of oppressive darkness with memorable melodies and the very human voice of Robert Smith that makes the Cure stand out. They wrote better tunes than Joy Division and better lyrics than New Order, they were much more than merely a goth band, and they are more relevant than recent contenders like the Smashing Pumpkins, whose music is, ultimately, aimed only at teens. Yes, the Cure's lyrics are often naive fantasies, but somehow they are still incredibly powerful. If you put on your headphones, close your eyes, and just listen, after a while you'll start believing that the world around you is really as full of mystery, ecstasy, and tragedy as that of Robert Smith. Would it really be such a bad thing?

(Whatever you do, DO NOT get their recent career-spanning GREATEST HITS album. This CD, plus DISINTEGRATION and maybe WISH, will give you all the good stuff from there, and much more.)

This album is kind of pointless, I mean even if you are new to The Cure this really isn't that great of an introduction because songs like 'Killing an Arab' and 'Walk' are just plain horrible. All in all only about half this album is good (the Pornography and Faith songs, mainly), and I think that if someone wanted a good introduction to The Cure, then they should buy 'Pornography', 'Disintegration', and then 'Faith'...overall a lot of these songs are a sad, sad look at The Cure (The songs from Japanese Whispers, The Top, and Three Imaginary Boys are just tediously annoying, and they have that Pop sound which I try to avoid when it comes to The Cure and a lot of other "Goth" bands)I like The Cure as a more depressive band, and a lot of these songs dont make the cut, and after you get the albums this album is pointless anyway, so the only thing this album is good for is beginners, and even then I dont think its a good perspective of The Cure, Asside from the Pornography and Faith songs, this album is really a sad, sad look at The Cure as a depressive band, although it does capture the essence of The Cure's diverse styles...which is not really that great of a thing. If you like an album with a few great songs but a lot of bad ones too, then this is for you, but I recommend getting 'Pornography' or 'Disintegration' if you want a better look at The Cure, for those albums are sooo much better than this.

I'm not a huge fan of The Cure. I just picked this cd up on a whim after reading a couple of reviews about them. I could safely say that this collection of singles was an excellent buy, offering some remarkable songs that will get stuck in your head for weeks. For me, the middle of the cd gets a little dull- songs 6 through 12 don't do much for me. The first and last tracks however, are well worth the cost of this cd alone. Boys Don't Cry and Jumping Someone Else's Train are great songs in the beginning, and the cd closes strongly with some excellent tracks like Love Cats, In Between Days and Caterpillar. I implore any proselytes of The Cure to give this a go. For me, it served as a wonderful introduction to a very important, seminal band from the 70s and 80s. For the most part, Robert Smith's vocals are awesome, and the music is great as well. You Won't be disappointed.

I 100% AGREE ON THE B-SIDES BEING SO NECESARY, BECAUSE THEY ARE SO EXPERIMENTAL, DARK & WEIRD SOMETIMES, ALL OF THE REVIEWERS THAT SAY THIS SONGS ARE EVEN BETTER THAN THE SINGLES ARE DAMN RIGHT. I GREW UP WITH THIS ALBUM ON CASSETTE THAT IS, AND I WAS A LITTLE DISSAPOINTED WHEN IT CAME OUT ON CD. THE 4 XTRA SONGS ON CD DON'T REALLY PUT UP TO ALL THE B-SIDES MISSING. GET YOUR HANDS ON THE CASSETTE AND YOU'LL SEE WHAT ALL OF THESE GUYS ARE TALKING ABOUT.