String Quart Tribute to Cure

Tribute to Cure (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 9, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Vitamin Records
• ASIN: B000063RVM
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #289,270 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars At Last!, May 6, 2002

By 

Christian LeBlanc (Saint John, New Brunswick Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: String Quart Tribute to Cure (Audio CD)

I've been waiting a long time with a fantasy that someone would do some symphonic versions of some Cure songs. While a quartet is less grand than a full orchestra, "Whisper" still does the trick, and the quartets here are nothing to be disppointed by.

The songs on this album are imaginative versions of Cure songs, arranged for string quartet. Duh, right? Well, this project COULD have been drums and guitar with a violin playing Robert's vocal parts...considering this, I give "Whisper" high marks, even though I wish other less-known but more appropriate songs would have made the album ("A Few Hours After This," "To the Sky," "Treasure," etc). Bonus points for the covering of two newer tracks, "Bloodflowers" and "Maybe Someday." The version of "Just Like Heaven," The Cure's most covered song, joins the ranks of such great covers as Deadsy's and Dinosaur Jr's.

As I say, the arrangements are very close to the original songs, but don't adhere so closely that you think "why bother?" Vocal melodies are approximated - not duplicated - by the strings, which is what I prefer. The arrangement of "Hot Hot Hot" varies the furthest from the original, making a surprisingly wonderfully sombre piece out of the original chintsy tune. Pizzicato figures in nicely on a few tunes, as well.

The original tune "Zazen" sounds more like a Cure pastiche than a Cure-inspired tune; you'll probably be placing different parts of it with different songs. However, as nice as this tune is, I'd much rather have heard another full cover than this. (Granted, I'd rather the track be on it than have only 9 tracks on the album).

Overall, I'd recommend this album to huge Cure fans (who else would buy a tribute album anyway?). While not meeting my hugely high expectations (full orchestra, rare songs), this cd does a LOT better than what could have happened (listen to the "Pride" tribute to U2 to know what I mean). A good, solid album. Maybe this is naive, but I recommend buying this album rather than bootlegging, just so that the industry knows how welcome a project like this is (can we get any more, perhaps? : )

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Weak. Very, very weak., April 24, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: String Quart Tribute to Cure (Audio CD)

** Two stars generously given for the idea and production. **

Okay I'm not a fan of Cure covers, in fact I can't seem to think of one that I like, most of them make me mad that it was even attempted. I love strings and the fact that Roberts vocal lines arent attempted I thought this was going to be the missing link of Cure covers/tributes...

So when I first saw this album, my jaw dropped, I couldn't believe my eyes. Stared at it in awe for a minute, purely overjoyed, bought it and RAN to my car to listen to it. . . . Was interesting... Then I got it home, sat down and really listened to the entire thing, to be incredibly disappointed. It's not "BAD", it's a great idea, it was put together very good .. BUT .. The track selection is everything that is wrong with this. In my opinion, most of these songs were HORRIBLE choices. I don't think many of these work well with a string quartet. A few, yeah okay, aren't bad, but could have been much better with the proper tracks. They selected mostly the more upbeat pop singles, Just Like Heaven? Lovecats? C'mon...

This would have been INCREDIBLE if they did songs like Same Deep Water as You, All Cats are Grey, Kyoto Song, Sinking, If only Tonight we can Sleep, Faith, Apart... Things like that, slower songs. The upbeat pop songs, don't work for me with a quartet.

Great idea, wonderfully done, but terrible terrible track selection.

If I had heard this before I bought it, I wouldn't have, think about this before you purchase this.

I really thought this was going to be something special, like the Joy Division string Tribute which I HIGHLY recomend over this one, in fact go and get that right now if your looking for a string tribute.

3.0 out of 5 stars String Quartet Tribute to The Cure, January 30, 2009

By 

Joe Mama "Joe Mama" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: String Quart Tribute to Cure (Audio CD)

About what you'd expect. You can tell that they're the songs by The Cure. The gimmick wore off after about 4 or 5 songs. It's not bad. It's just not great. If you've heard the other string quartet tributes, it's on par with those.