Presence - Inside (1993)

Although Cure founding member Laurence Tolhurst appeared to disappear from view the moment he departed that band in 1990, he was silent for only a few months before reuniting with one-time Cure roadie/Fools Dance vocalist Gary Biddles in a new band, Presence. And the moment their first album dropped in spring 1992, one thing was clear. Presence did sound like the Cure. And why not? For who's to say who came up with that band's trademarks in the first place? Besides (and this was the important thing), Presence sounded like the Cure if Robert Smith hadn't seized control after Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and hung on ever since. Or, listeners had heard his side of the "creative differences" battleground; now it was Tolhurst's turn. It was hard, sometimes, to understand why they got divorced in the first place. The deliciously twee "Act of Faith" and the "Pictures of You"-esque "On Ocean Hill" both followed the latter-day line of Cure-ious thought. Elsewhere, however, the raw-splintered "Never," the melancholy "Pause," and the haunted/haunting title track kicked with a genuine passion, unheard from other quarters since The Head on the Door days. And, for anybody still reeling from the horrors of the Cure's own most recent releases, if Wish was the cure, then Inside was the plague with the built-in immunity.~Inside Review by Dave Thompson