Cure - Pornography [Deluxe Edition]
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Free Music Notes for Pornography [Deluxe Edition]
Free Music Review: Listen to the drums
Hit: 5 Stars
A few years back I bought the original CD release of Pornography, to see if there was anything beyond the tracks from Staring at the Sea I liked. I played through it and forgot about, nothing special. So when I bought this re-release (along with the simultaneous rereleases of Faith and Seventeen Seconds) I wasn't expecting much.
Boy was I wrong! This album comes alive with the remasters, just listen to the drums. I think of this as the "angry drum album", because that's what it is. For those who didn't like Pornography, listen to this album at night while driving in your car. Focus on the drums, let them hammer into you. Then you'll get it.
One Hundred Years sounds about like it does on the Paris concert album, and the drums beat into you as they always do on The Hanging Garden. A real treat is The Figurehead, most familiar to owners of the Paris live album. The drums are just stunning on this one, as Robert's vocals wail on. A Strange Day has an eerie beat reminiscent of early eighties pop in general, but there is that devastating drum again. Finally I love Cold, with a dread organ playing backdrop to the menacing drumbeat.
The bonus CD has some interesting oddities and some really excellent tracks. It opens with two "mood" demos, Break and Demise, which give you a feel for what went into this album. A real standout is the studio demo of The Figurehead. The arrangements are the same, but spare and without frills. It's good enough to be on my playlist along with the other versions of the song.
The early version of The Hanging Garden is a great illustration of just what went into Robert Smith's songs. Somewhere along this bland song he said toss it, let rip out something completely different with a hammering drum beat. The live version of Cold is a treat, and sounds great. The live Short Term Effect is so clean I mistook it for a studio jam.
The album sleeve art and font are distorted and hard to make out, as was obviously the intent. It sums up the mood of the album certainly. (Note that the fonts are different from the two previous album reissues, so this is all deliberate.) If you heard Pornography before and dismissed it, get this remastered edition and hear it as it was meant to be heard, with the drums hammering into your brain!
Free Music Review: Early masterpiece.
Hit: 5 Stars
As each album had been getting progressively darker, there seemed little room for the Cure to go after "Faith", but "Pornography" found something new-- Robert Smith (guitar, vocals, keys), Simon Gallup (bass, keys), and Lol Tolhurst (drums, keys) constructed something dark, edgy, and frightening, taking the haunted mood of the last album and adding aggression and noise. The guitars have become more distorted and louder, and the drums have been moving into a somewhat more tribal pattern. The result is something much more in your face than anything the Cure had done.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the opener, probably best summed by the line "waiting for the death blow", "One Hundred Years" is full of edgy guitars and despondant passion. This sort of passionate delivery is a thread throughout the album-- take the powerful invocation of "I will never be clean again" on "The Figurehead" (over a great tribal drum pattern from Tolhurst) or the plodding but effective "Siamese Twins", rescued by a great Smith vocal.
While the album is pretty dark, it does get fairly varied-- "A Strange Day" seems almost optimistic (if you don't listen too closely to what Smith is singing) and the album does cover a number of moods, from rock ("One Hundred Years") to pseudo-ambient ("A Short Term Effect") to a sort of gothic progressive rock ("Cold"). Start to finish, its a fantastic album, and unlike many albums with a somewhat unvaried mood, this one is quite listenable.
As the rest of the Cure remasters, the sound is fantastic, crisp, clean, showing every nuance of the music and allowing its expressiveness to breathe. Again, the liner notes include a candid and honest essay about the creation of the album and the tour that followed, and a disc of bonus material is included. The demos, given the sort of bleak production of the music, are often quite telling on this one, and the live material is nothing short of fantastic, although the sound quality in both cases is not letter perfect for obvious reasons, but given the strength of the material, it carries through well enough.
If you're new to the Cure but used to kind of odd music, this might be a good place to start, its certainly one of their peaks, and thsi reissue only makes it sound better.
Free Music Review: An essential reissue for Cure enthusiasts
Hit: 5 Stars
I went into the record store I work at on Monday, my day off, just to buy the three reissues before anybody else had a chance. The first one I put in was 'Pornography', the one I was most excited about.
As for the remastered sound, this could be the least altered of the three reissues. The most noticeable improvement is certainly the element of "distance" given to Robert Smith's voice. His vocals have a permanent echo to them that float above the mix much clearer than in the past issuing of the album. The mix is considerably louder and given more bottom end. If anything is proven by modern remastering, however, it's that the actual production of the album is extremely dense and murky. 'One Hundred Years' with its "Phil Spector in Hell" sound doesn't reveal quite as much as a more subtle, spare song like 'The Figurehead' (the first guitar arpeggio, for instance, and even Smith's vocals).
The bonus material and packaging is first rate. Most of the rarities disc contains live material and rejected instrumental demos. The most fascinating part of this reissue is definitely the demo of 'The Hanging Garden'. It started out as a slower number with a more basic drum beat, and lyrics that would become parts of other 'Pornography' songs. It almost feels as if this were a creative start for the whole project. The 'Airlock' soundtrack shows Robert Smith's mental state probably more than anything on this whole reissue (you'll have to listen to it to know what I mean).
In my opinion, the sound on this reissue isn't quite as improved and clear as on the other two reissues, but it is a definite and genuine improvement over the original cd issue. The second disc and booklet makes this essential for major Cure fans.
Free Music Review: 100 stars If I could..The cures finest moment
Hit: 5 Stars
I have been a cure fan since the 8th grade. They are and have been my favorite band. Having digested all of thier albums continously (this band got me through high school, so I support this band very strongly) I can honestly say that Pornography is thier best body of work. Nothing else they did comes close to this...its incredible. Its like being thrown into your worst nightmare and enjoying it. Yeah, Im confused too but there it is. The song "100 Hundred years"(the song itself makes the album worth buying) starts the trip without mercy with Robert Smith uttering the harsh "It doesnt matter if we all die." You know that you are in for a heck of a ride so your brain automatically buckles its seatbelt and before you know it, your lost in this beautiful and disturbing world. If the cure were labled Goth after this record than they only have themselves to blame for churning out this masterpiece. But you cant help but listen to this and know that all of the dracula wannabes have this record in thier collection.
If your new to the cure and you are interested in trying to understand what all the fuss is about than this is the best starting point for your unforgettable journey into this bands mythic and brilliant music.
Most people will say that Disintegration or Head on the door is the launching pad But I disagree. Pornography is the best way to get it. Its the Cure at its most vulnerable and its most potent. THe song "100 years" will be all the proof you need and before you know it your hooked.
Than you will find yourself patting yourself on the back for listening to this wonderful band...I still do....17 years and counting.
Free Music Review: A Treat for long time Cure fans
Hit: 5 Stars
As a long time fan of The Cure 20plus years, I was thrilled to hear about the remasters and this was the one I was most excited about, as the album/cd always sounded muffled and murky. Pornography is such a beautiful album in the sense of poetry, lyrics, mood, and atmosphere. After all these years, I still find myself singing along full of delicious misery and covered in cold chills. So thats how I felt about the album coming into this whole remaster game. Well, the remaster and bonus dics are simply put, wonderful. The album never sounded better, especially when played very loud. The bonus disc has 6 great demo versions that sound better than the demos on any of the other remasters. 3 demos of which are not even on the original album. The Hanging Garden is the real treat here, sounding more like a track off of Faith with lyrics that later became all different parts of the Pornography album. The live tracks are great and capture the moments as only a bootleg can. Two other stand out tracks are of course the insane Airlock Soundtrack, which is by far the craziest and spookiest thing I have ever heard The Cure do. It sounds like "the score to a totally disturbing French horror film set in an insane asylym during a raging storm" type of track. It gives one also the sense of Robert's state of mind at the time. Finally, a track called Temptation, which later became Let's go to bed. So imagine if Let's Go To Bed was on Pornography instead with mostly different lyrics. What a traet for me and my friends to discuss and listen to forever. If you are a true fan of The Cure and Robert, this is simply priceless.