Has anyone put the dress under a blacklight? It might not resolve the color question but it may tell us whether it has been in a room with Bill Clinton.

Rock on, @Ding L Berry.

Oh, that wasn't meant to be a dig at the Cure at all, I think Smith has been pretty open about his admiration for some of his peers (covering Joy Division and Depeche Mode etc.) and I think he is, no hyperbole, one of the great pop/rock songwriters of his era, with an inventive body of work and ridiculously-wide…

Supposedly there was a period of time where the band thought they were still hearing Curtis through their amplifiers/equipment and such, though they admit they were doing a fair amount of cocaine at the time. I am trying to find a reference for the claim but haven't been able to.

And I'm glad you did! Listening to it now, I like it. In a weird way it reminds me of the later twee-poppers like Talulah Gosh et al.

Agreed, and I just posted something similar above, I should have scrolled down slightly farther and put it here instead.

The problem (for the article's UK-centric theme) is that as you move to krautrock, you must acknowledge that Kraftwerk are the true originators of this stuff, the Android Zeroes of synthpop-as-we-know-it.

Yeah, "I Ran" is just sort of silly to me, but "SALS" still sounds like epic adolescent melancholy.

"Procession" rules.

Nope!

I should have asked her that. I was pretty flabbergasted.

That it not only survives but somehow surmounts some of Sumner's naffest lyrics is a minor miracle.

Weirdly, I just had a conversation with a female friend who was somehow unaware of the lesbian subtext of those songs…

Yeah, from what I understand, New Order occasionally got miffed at what they saw as the Cure biting their style (see also, the total Peter Hook bassline in "Inbetween Days"). I always thought that New Order nicking the chord progression from "Just Like Heaven" for "All The Way" was a little jokey revenge.

Silicon Teens use drum machines and tambourines
Silicon Teens are from England

Eh, March 1990 only misses 80's by a hair - it's interesting that guitars were about to blow up in a big way in a year or so on the "alternative" scene (as was "electronica", for that matter) and DM started to sneak them in on that album…

Well, it DOES mention "Temptation", but New Order are a bit of an outlier here for a few reasons - from their origins in JD, they fall more onto the "postpunk" spectrum, and their continuing incorporation of traditional rock instrumentation (guitars/drums etc., which bands like DM wouldn't touch at all until Violator)…

When Mail Robot Met Martha

Ok, that makes sense. I swear I pay attention but every once in a while the show loses me.

I thought it was a random Northrop employee. So what do they gain from his death? Does it just open up a job for her friend there?