The Glove: Blue Sunshine : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

For any connoisseur of psychedelic goth porn, the Glove's Blue Sunshine is an all-time lost classic. The Glove were a one-off 1983 project featuring two goth titans: Robert Smith of the Cure and Steve Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees. They must have gotten together one summer to take a lot of drugs, watch a lot of slasher movies and write a lot of songs, naming their album after a potent strain of LSD. The Cure's record company wouldn't let Smith sing, so they got faux-Siouxsie vocals from the Banshees' drummer's girlfriend, Jeanette Landray. The Glove never got a proper U.S. release, despite one big-hair perv-disco club hit, "Like an Animal."

Blue Sunshine has always been a highly coveted rarity among Dracula types. But the deluxe Rhino reissue makes all previous versions obsolete, because it adds a bonus disc of Smith's original demo vocals -- in other words, a lost Cure album from 1983, every bit as choice as Pornography or The Head on the Door, full of wigged-out psychedelic adventures with charismatic young ladies who leave Smith broken on the stairs with his legs in the air. Highlights include "Punish Me With Kisses," "Sex-Eye-Make-Up" and "Mouth to Mouth," where Smith growls, "Your body grows more beautiful with every bite I take." If you're even vaguely interested in this kind of thing, you need Blue Sunshine -- and also, perhaps, the finest professional help.