(Indie Rock/Alternative Rock) VA - Perfect As Cats: A Tribute To The Cure - 2008, MP3, 320 kbps

While you're scrolling through your mental Rolodex trying to remember the last tribute record you actually liked, realize that the Cure are still a pretty damn fine candidate for the Various Artists treatment. Perhaps three discs released almost concurrently is a bit much but the Cure's discography is deep, complex, and, most importantly, erratic enough to give Just Like Heaven and Perfect As Cats a chance. You could pay tribute to just how much ground the group has covered from their spiky, spooky post-punk origins to their current status as revered figureheads of nearly all forms of alternative rock, or you could stick to a single style that emphasizes the strength of the songwriting. The participants could show their devotion by digging through the vaults for lost treasures or they could try to find a new angle in their more popular canon.
But Just Like Heaven chooses the latter for both and does nobody any favors, especially the listener. It's jammed with enough Nick and Norah-styled bands to make Dark Was the Night come off like the Judgment Night OST-- you know the drill: cutesy band name, mussy, bored-sounding guy, mousy, bored-sounding girl, lots of childish synths, and the burden of waking up every day knowing damn well "Young Folks" will totally pwn anything they ever come up with. And of course, they're going to pick the sort of songs that the Cure just kept on the right side of embarrassing, the kind that you might have viewed as gospel in your hormonally challenging teen years that their cloying, lustless approach will completely ruin for you. In other words, don't expect "Shake Dog Shake" or "One Hundred Years" here.
At least you're tuned in to how bad things are going to be from the first second. How much does Robert Smith convey in just the first line of "Just Like Heaven"? But Joy Zipper can't be bothered: Instead of evoking the desperation and dire, wrist-slashing romance of the original, they conjure the self-satisfied smugness of every couple you hate in an insultingly flat and tuneless performance. Tanya Donelly and Dylan in the Movies' (teasingly, "Tanya Donelly and Dylan..." on your iPod) mismatched voices prepare "The Lovecats" for a cross-species CGI love story yet to be made. While Robert Smith has claimed that "Friday, I'm In Love" is a Cure song for people who don't usually like the Cure, there's an undeniable uplift in the chorus lauding the possibilities that the weekend can bring to even the most harried of us. The way it's handled by Dean & Britta, you'd think it was called, "Friday, So What Do You Want to Do Tonight? I Dunno, What Do You Wanna Do?" And did you know that there was a shitty mall-punk song dying to get out of "In Between Days"? If so, then you'll hear what Kitty Karlyle heard when they left the studio.
How hard could this be? Take an emo sensibility, slow down some Cure songs and add a layer of updated studio trickery and boom, you have the coordinates for Jimmy Eat World's increasingly prophetic Clarity. But Luff and the Submarines pick the wrong tunes for the job-- though both classics, "Jumping Someone Else's Train" and "Boys Don't Cry" are more powered by the vigor of their streamlined arrangements than the depth of the lyircs. Here, they're lugged at a slowcore pace and are exposed as sonambulent bitch sessions. At the very least, "The Walk" is done justice by the Rosebuds-- not surprising since that very song pretty much invented their Night of the Furies-- and Elk City turns "Close to Me" inside out to a sprawling, percussive clatter. (Though it still falls short of Kaki King's understated virtuosity on the Perfect as Cats version.) And unlike Perfect as Cats, this isn't even for charity.
It's not every day where a 2xLP tribute is a favorable alternative to anything, but Perfect as Cats immediately trumps Just Like Heaven with generally more inspired song selections and a greater level of talent...or at the very least, more recognizable talent, though it doesn't stop relative headliners the Dandy Warhols from making a typically bored walk-through of "Primary".
Xu Xu Fang take "Fascination Street" on a trip through Massive Attack's Mezzanine, with static crackle, flutes, and a portentous tom beat inverting the sentiment from wide-eyed wonder to heavy-lidded menace. Credit Bat For Lashes for skillfully retaining the grayscale psychedlia of "A Forest" without turning it into trip-hop. But the people who put together Perfect as Cats seem to be acknowledging the ridiculously remote possibility that anyone could want to listen to this 33-song platter end-to-end and ignore anything that could pass for smart sequencing or pacing. Witness putting two versions of "The Walk" back-to-back, the first in which Indian Jewelry takes it under the Knife with clamorous steel drums and general awfulness. The next is Geneva Jacuzzi's near perfect facsimile, right down to the lead synth tone.
Strangely, it suggests the trajectory for the rest of the affair, where the more satisfying numbers are either straight covers or complete about-faces. The Muslims (now the Soft Pack) wisely resist "Killing an Arab" and instead apply their no-bullshit garage rock to "Grinding Halt", while "In Between Days" is stripped down to a Three Imaginary Boys chassis by Blackblack. On the other side, Jesu stretch out "The Funeral Party" to post-rock infinity, Joker's Daughter does the inevitable J-Pop twist on "Kyoto Song" and "Hot, Hot, Hot" is given a salacious en francais treatment by Les Bicylettes Blanches.
But even after all of that, it must be stressed that the vast majority just proves how many bands you've never heard of can pull off perfectly good imitations of Robert Smith (Rainbow Arabia, Wolfkin, Buddy, the Corridor and Ex Reverie, stand up and be counted!) and yet somehow still miss the point that these things should at least try to be entertaining. I'd hate to suggest that fame is correlative to great music, but in this realm, maybe that's the case. You want to hear a familiar act taken out of their comfort zone or a song doing the same. Here, it's just Amateur Hour three times over proving that the Cure were better than anyone at doing what they do. But at least everyone could've waited until Disintegration was out of print.
— Ian Cohen, March 12, 2009, Pitchfork