CRUSTY CLIP OF THE WEEK: THE CURE - "THE FUNERAL PARTY/M" LIVE IN METZ, FRANCE 1981

Every single Wednesday without fail, your hosts post a suitably stale video clip that we think needs to be revisited. Click here for more Crusty Clips. Got a clip you think we should post? Send it to crustcake@gmail.com.

By Andrew Wilhelm (Denver)

Goodbye, 2011. Hello, 2012. This year is going to be just as shitty as the last (unless the apocalypse happens, which will RULE), which means I've been listening to a lot of The Cure's early records lately. Gloom has always been a key ingredient of the Robert Smith-led group, but it's on a trio of albums early in their career - 1980's Seventeen Seconds, 1981's Faith, and 1982's Pornography - that rank among the darkest music the band's ever made. Unlike the group's subsequent efforts, which still wallowed in melancholy but also made digestible with catchy hooks, these albums did not let up in making you feel like life is nothing. In fact, following a personal fallout from band members, the music on the compilation that followed this threesome of sorrow, Japanese Whispers, was a total 180 of upbeat dance-pop that did not sound like it came from a collective of miserablists. Ironically, "Let's Go To Bed" makes me more depressed than the entirety of Pornography.

Why am I talking about The Cure on a metal site? Some metalheads, like myself, are fond of dark pop, which The Cure definitely are. Also, I came to realize "The Funeral Party," from Faith, could totally be funeral doom's pop crossover. Hear me out on this one, dudes.

The song is built around swirling, mournful synths patterned not unlike an Esoteric or Skepticism guitar crawl. Hell, Skepticism probably lifted a keyboard line or two from this song. The synths don't change very much throughout the song, and they stay downtempo like a funeral should. A feeling of oppressive doom surrounds the whole song, and subsequently, the listener. And here's an except from the lyrics, which are a bummer even without Smith's trademark mopey vocals: "I watched/And acted wordlessly/As piece by piece/You performed your story/Moving through an unknown past/Dancing at the funeral party." Only death is real.

In dishonor of the new year, here's a performance clip of "Funeral," as well as "M" from Seventeen from 1981 in Metz, France.