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.