Staring at the Sea: The Singles

AMG Review of Staring at the Sea: The Singles

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

Staring at the Sea: The Singles collects all of the Cure's biggest U.K. hits and best-known songs from the late '70s and early '80s. Spanning from "Killing an Arab" and "Boys Don't Cry," to "The Lovecats," "In Between Days," and "Close to Me," Staring at the Sea captures some of the finest -- and most influential -- post-punk music. At their best, the Cure were nervy, intellectual, catchy, and foreboding, all at once. No matter how carefully crafted the Cure's individual albums were, their finest moments occurred on singles like these, when they distilled their essence into surprisingly catchy, but decidedly left-of-center, pop singles. Staring at the Sea not only selects highlights from their uneven early albums, it collects many of the group's terrific non-LP singles. It's a definitive retrospective of the Cure and is one of the finest albums of the '80s. [The cassette version of Staring at the Sea was titled Standing on a Beach and included several B-sides.]