Friday, November 5, 2010 EDITORS CURED BY LULLABY
Post-post-punk Brummies cover my favorite Cure song on the NME’s “Godlike Geniuses” tribute compilation
Photo: www.last.fm/music/Editors
Editors “Lullaby” (The Cure Cover) (from NME’s Pictures of You: A Tribute to Godlike Geniuses the Cure, 2009)
would be a fool not to credit the Cure as the model for what I call make-out music — or at least its torch holders for the 80s. Pestered by romance and a tingling sensation in their pants, goth kids, as legend has it, meticulously crafted at least one mixtape with Robert Smith & Co. on Side 1 — and maybe something upbeat off Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me for good measure on Side 2 — keeping just the right amount of hissing silence at the end to make sure the listener “got it.”
Decades later modern U.K. and U.S. bands obviously still “get it.” In February the NME, Britain’s premier Morrissey hate-mongorers, released a compilation of Cure covers after awarding the band with the title of “Godlike Geniuses” at the Shockwaves NME Awards. One of my favorite Cure songs, 1989’s “Lullaby,” also happened to be covered by Editors, one of my favorite bands to listen to when Interpol’s busy. I loved the original’s spider-like strings, rolling bass line and hovering synth and, though this cover has none of those things, Editors make it their own by speeding it up and drenching it in their signature guitar reverb. I’m still wondering, though: Which version will get that girl to fall in love with me? 
