CURE (The) The Top LP Vinyl RSD 2024

1984 was a strange year to be strange. Post-punk was either hardening into goth or softening into synth-pop, and Robert Smith was doing neither, making something weirder and more chemically unstable than either camp wanted to claim. The Top is the record The Cure made when they were barely holding it together, and it sounds exactly like that.

Overshadowed for years by the albums on either side of it, The Top has quietly earned its cult. It's lysergic and fractured, less a goth record than a psychedelic anxiety dream, all spiralling guitars and Smith's vocals pitched somewhere between a lullaby and a breakdown. Wailing Wall, Shake Dog Shake, The Caterpillar. It's the Cure album for people who find Disintegration too composed. This Record Store Day 2024 picture disc pressing is the physical object it deserves to be.

Format: LP vinyl, picture disc. RSD 2024 exclusive pressing. Genre: goth, post-punk, new wave. Artist origin: England, 1984.

Fans of: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, early Echo and the Bunnymen.