I just streamed Robert Smith of the Cure’s cover of “Very Good Advise” from the Disney cartoon version of “Alice In Wonderland” and recorded for the eagerly anticipated Tim Burton take on the Lewis Carrol masterpiece (though it begs the question why don’t people tackle the equally wonderful “Through The looking Glass”).
I once saw a nightmare vision of “Wonderland” made for BBC some thirty-five years ago and I’m betting Burton’s version is gonna get stuck in weirdness and camp though Burton has been known to get it right as often as not.
His soundtrack sure don’t so far. Avril Lavign’s “Alice” doesn’t bear thinking about and Robert Smith’s cover is… well, do you remember when Disney released an album of rock stars like the replacements and Sinead O’connor covering Disney classics called Stay Awake? It wasn’t bad and it wasn’t great but “Very Good Advise” makes it sound like Revolver (the Vatican’s fave album of all time).
Smith sounds like Smith with a twee backing track on an ordinary song.
Let’s hope both album and movie is substantially better than this
You can stream it on pitchfork and stereogum.