10/25/1990 All Music Guide
Standing On A Beach : The Singles
Standing on a Beach: The Singles collects all of the Cure's biggest UK 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," "Inbetween Days," and "Close to Me," Standing on a Beach 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 occured on singles like these, when they distilled their essence into surprisingly catchy, but decidedly left-of-center, pop singles. Standing on a Beach 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 compact disc version of Standing on a Beach was entitled Staring at the Sea and featured four songs that were not on the vinyl editon. The cassette version of Standing on a Beach included several B-sides.)
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine
