All of a sudden, I’m seeing The Cure in all sorts of places – news broke on Monday that the venerable English band are dragging out their hairspray, black hair dye and red lipstick for the 2012 European summer festival season, and last night I saw Finnish band French Films, whose song introductions seemed to be mostly variations on the intro to the classic ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (I’m not saying that’s a bad thing).

After the heydays of the 80s and 90s, The Cure hovered stealthily but steadily at the edges of the popular music conscience for a couple of decades. But not for much longer – I guess it’s now The Cure’s turn to be at the frontline of influence for the current generation of up-and-coming bands. I’m seeing their names pop up on press releases in the field marked ‘seminal influences while growing up’ a lot more lately – well, they did win the NME ‘Godlike Genius’ award in 2009. Looks like 2012 is going be a Cure revival on a rather epic scale.

So in the wake of the (glorious) news of Smith and co.’s return to the concert arena in 212, I’m revisiting The Cure’s increasingly-referenced back catalogue. For instance, the track ‘Lullaby’, from 1989′s brilliant Disintegration, which, along with Twin Peak’s Bob, used to scare the crap out of me in high school:

The Cure are playing at numerous festivals during the European summer, including Pinkpop (NL), Les Eurockeennes (FR), Southside (DE), Hurricane (DE), Hultsfred (SE), Roskilde (DK), Heinekin Jammin’ (IT), and Rock In Roma (IT). Fingers crossed for a Swiss festival! See the full list here.