The Cure - Greatest Hits

Deluxe three disc set (two CDs and one NTSC/Region 0 DVD), part of Universal's outstanding Sound & Vision series, with each disc packaged in it's own individual cardboard sleeve and all three tucked inside a cardboard slipcase. Disc One features 18 of the Cure's best-known tracks including 'Friday I'm In Love', 'Boys Don't Cry', 'Close To Me', 'Just Like Heaven' and more. Disc Two features the same tracks performed acoustically by Robert Smith and the boys. Disc Three is a DVD featuring the videos for the 18 tracks on Disc One plus six of the same songs performed acoustically as featured on Disc Two. Most certainly a feast for the Cure fan's ears and eyes!

As Greatest Hits--and particularly the busking pavement jazz of "Lovecats"--reminds us, the best Cure singles were very often tangential exercises; they offered a goth-free playtime divergence from some of the weightier studiousness of those early albums. Or, as smudged frontman Robert Smith says of this 18-track collection, "Songs that are sung with a smile." This wasn't always true--witness the refrigerated fogginess of the classic "A Forest," the Blair Witch Project of its day. What this compilation does is focus attention on the Cure's perennial unpredictability--the breathless claustrophobia of "Close to Me," the New Order-lite of "The Walk," the brass- section embellished thrust of "Why Can't I Be You." Oddly, chart-wise, the Cure's lost weekend began immediately after "Friday I'm in Love," their most ebullient melodic moment and the ultimate "clocking-off to kick those heels" anthem. But at least the inclusion of two new songs, "Cut Here" and "Just Say Yes" (with Saffron from Republica), indicate that the Cure remain a healthy, ongoing concern. --Kevin Maidment