Cured
	Produced by Steve Hackett, John Acock, Nick Magnus
	Released on 1981
	UK CHART POSITION #15 . . . US CHART POSITION #169
	Find it at GEMM
CHC 21 cover [high resolution photo]

S teve’s DIY (as in wouldn’t you rather than listen to this) album. The trouble isn’t just his singing, but that there’s so much of it. Despite the tropical drinks that grace the cover of Cured, bottled wine would have been more appropriate given Hackett’s puny pipes. The solution? Overdub his voice to give it a chorus effect. I can tell you, a gaggle of Hackettses is a horrible thing to behold. But everything here is overdubbed: guitars, bass, even poor Nick Magnus gets pressed into (synthetic) drum duty. Cured is a treacly, torpid mess most of the time. The frustrating thing is that the songs themselves aren’t that bad. “Hope I Don’t Wake” and “Overnight Sleeper” could have been very good songs if given the Spectral treatment. Instead, they get Phillipsed screwed (for anyone who remembers Sides). Hackett has a voice made for instrumentals, and when he stays silent (“A Cradle of Swans,” “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”) is when I most want to sing Cured’s praises. After all, the red rating aside, Hackett is far too talented to bore for an entire album. But he needs more than good ideas; he needs good musicians to execute them. Cured could have been a good record if he hadn’t tried to go it alone. The good/evil pairing of “A Cradle of Swans” and “Overnight Sleeper,” for example, is vintage Hackett. But there’s just no getting past that voice or the listless rhythms, and overdubbing ain’t the answer. Save your money for Tony Banks’ The Fugitive or Anthony Phillips’ 1984 instead.

CHC 21 back cover	PET-37632 cover

TRACK LISTING

1. HOPE I DON'T WAKE
2. PICTURE POSTCARD
3. CAN'T LET GO
4. THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE
5. FUNNY FEELING    (Steve Hackett/Nick Magnus)
6. A CRADLE OF SWANS
7. OVERNIGHT SLEEPER    (Steve Hackett/Kim Poor)
8. TURN BACK TIME
   
   All tracks written by Steve Hackett unless noted

CREDITS

STEVE HACKETT -- guitars, bass, vocals
NICK MAGNUS -- keyboards, drum machine
Bimbo Acock -- sax (2)
John Hackett -- flute (7), bass pedals (4)
John Acock -- engineer
Kim Poor -- cover photos, design
Bryan Hemming -- design

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