Cure - Pornography [Deluxe Edition]
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Free Music Notes for Pornography [Deluxe Edition]
Free Music Review: The Shock of What Was New
Hit: 5 Stars
It's a shame in a way that nowadays this album seems to fit in with a vast amount of similarly aggressive and agonising music. On it's release it was the first of it's kind and to describe its impact as harrowing would be a serious understatement.
Seminal it undoubtably was but where other bands strive to achieve the same effect they fail because 'Pornography' is so sincere. Only Nirvana reached the level of outright desperation that brutally stabs out of this recording. But cacophony in itself is not enough. These are really great songs produced by a man who was driving himself way too hard.
In amongst the relentlessly attacking sound, evidence of a great songwriter emerges in moments of astonishing beauty. This is why the Cure's more recent releases fail. Smith was still discovering his ability and wrote as a man in some kind of genuine purgatory. Now, he's wealthy and comfortable and no matter how hard he digs, the well of desparate memories and wondrous revelations have run dry.
So considering it's utterly uncompromising sound it's not surprising that this shocking album didn't sell on release. It left people either stunned (like watching someone having a nervous breakdown at a party) or alienated, after all, it's predecessors were low key and fanciful in comparison.
It marked a change in Smith's life. Although the following album had it's moments of crushing beauty he moved firmly into the land of the 'Lovecats', commercial success and some kind of weird happiness. And unlike Kurt Cobain there really was a happy ending.
Free Music Review: Totally Worthwhile Upgrade
Hit: 5 Stars
For fifteen years consumers have had to live with muddy-sounding, flat, low-rent mastering of this classic album. Now, finally, we've got something akin to actual hi-fi. The remastering is amazing. I'm listening to it right now on my wife's cheap Panasonic shelf system and can hear at least four new levels of nuance in just about every instrument in the mix. I honestly feel like I'm hearing the album for the first time.
Robert's voice in particular now actually sounds like it's coming through the flames at you, bounding down from his implosive pulpit like a hail of nails. This album has always been billed as the group's most depressing work -- a love letter to self hate and cryptic defeatism. It is. And beautifully so. Much of the current generation of corporate goth rockers (Manson et al) sound positively silly compared to this album.
As for the extras, well, they're a mixed bag. The studio demos often sound like completely different tracks (particularly the Hanging Garden demo which sounds more like something off "Faith.") These are worth the price alone. The live material is certainly inspired but most of it comes from audience recordings. Nonetheless, with live material from this era being so rare, anything is better than nothing.
Overall, I'd call this an automatic purchase for any Cure fan and certainly the preferred format for new fans to discover one of their best albums. Short of the work of groups such as Current 93, absolutely nothing else comes close to depicting the inherent inner-violence of depression. Pornography indeed.
Free Music Review: a strange and worthwhile day
Hit: 5 Stars
Tis truly a mystery how a thoroughly confused and arguably disturbed young man with greatly tousled hair and poorly applied make-up smearing his face could manage to plumb the depths of universal consciousness to create such majesty as this profound album. The lyrics are stirring and emotionally arousing. The song structures seem to mirror the journey of the soul through the corridors of Dante's halls, pulling the listener deeper and deeper into oblivion...and then strangely back up through joy and bliss.
Though I was certainly old enough to enjoy this work when it was first released, it has taken me about twenty years to truly understand its profundity and enduring impact. Having caught the live show "Trilogy" on DVD and having seen The Cure perform live several times through the years, I was amazed at how well these songs have stood up and how beautifully they are now being played by current members of The Cure. This double disc set - which ingeniously includes lots of worthwhile rarities - is the perfect trip down nostalgia lane while opening up your nerve endings to sounds that are ultimately timeless, fresh and oh so powerful.
Robert Smith is our Roger Waters; and coincidentally this work belongs up there on par with Dark Side of The Moon and the other seminal titles that make up the best rock albums of all time.
Free Music Review: A Masterpiece of Gothic Despair!
Hit: 5 Stars
There is no question in my mind that Robert Smith's head was in the lowest pit of hell when he wrote this album. The music is filled with anger, hate, sorrow, fear, rage, and despair; all pieces of the darker parts of the human psyche. The listener is taken on a gothic roller-coaster ride through dementia starting with the line "It doesn't matter if we all die" all the way to the vampiric conclusion "I must fight this sickness". Such emotion in this album, and you can't pull away from listening to it. There is something about the way the music is constructed and performed that keeps your ears alert and numbs your mind to the pain that is being expressed. You find yourself understanding the agony of the performers.
This record was way ahead of its time and, until 1989's "Disintigration", was The Cure's greatest achievement in the studio. Every song is great and they flow from one to the next in a perfect order. This album is flawless; a magically written, masterfully performed accomplishment in music.
The Deluxe Edition makes this version a must. The second disc is filled with goodies from this period in The Cure's history. It complements the original album with songs of the same gloomy feeling that the album focuses on.
Free Music Review: A Vision of Hell
Hit: 5 Stars
A good starting point for new fans of The Cure. This brilliant CD is much more than a downer: Pornography depicts a desperate scream for salvation from the deepest pits of depravity; images of the grotesque ("scarred/ your back was turned/ curled like an embryo") only emphasize the submerged humanity trying to claw its way out ("her legs around me... / in the morning I cried"). The sound, with Phil Thornally at the helm, is ugly, sharp, pounding, and surprisingly accessible. CD2 offers a few worthwhile live tracks, but the highlight is definitely the instrumental "Airlock," a macabre and cannibalistic Punch & Judy show. But you should own this for the remastering on CD1, which is a vast improvement over the previous muddy digitization.
If your knowledge of The Cure begins and ends with pop radio singles, then this early album will put their later work in perspective. You may finally appreciate the redemptive potential of a dizzy pop ditty like "Friday I'm in Love" when you understand that "Thursday I don't care about you" means "one more day like today and I'll kill you/ I'll watch you drown in the shower."
Is it any wonder that "The Lovecats" came next?