Pornography

Product Information

Tolhurst, Lol (2016). Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. Da Capo Press. p.278. ISBN 9780306824289. Put simply, One Hundred Years is by far the most thrilling and terrifying opening act of any top 10 album from 1982. It’s probably still for me at least the strongest and most compulsively powerful opener on any Cure album period. There is nothing that comes even a third of the way close to its sheer rancorous claustrophobia, existential despair and sense of absolute ‘end of the world’ dread. Beaujon, Andrew (April 2005). "66.6 Greatest Moments in Goth". Spin. Vol.21, no.4. pp.70–73 . Retrieved 27 October 2012. On the album's recording sessions, Smith noted "there was a lot of drugs involved". [8] The band took LSD and drank a lot of alcohol, and to save money, they slept in the office of their record label. [9] The musicians usually turned up at eight, and left at midday looking "fairly deranged". Smith related: "We had an arrangement with the off-licence up the road, every night they would bring in supplies. We decided we weren't going to throw anything out. We built this mountain of empties in the corner, a gigantic pile of debris in the corner. It just grew and grew". [9] According to Tolhurst, "we wanted to make the ultimate, intense album. I can't remember exactly why, but we did". [8] The recording sessions commenced and concluded in three weeks. Smith noted, "At the time, I lost every friend I had, everyone, without exception, because I was incredibly obnoxious, appalling, self-centred". He also noted that with the album, he "channelled all the self-destructive elements of my personality into doing something". [8] Ironically, for a band that prided itself initially on being defiantly anti image, the 1982 Pornography era was effectively the very first time the band actually had an identifiable image to speak of. Unsurprisingly, it soon became their trademark.

a b Mason, Stewart. " Pornography – The Cure". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 24 July 2018 . Retrieved 21 March 2018.Smith said that "the reference point" for Pornography was the Psychedelic Furs' self-titled debut album, which he noted "had, like, a density of sound, really powerful". [16] Smith also cited Siouxsie and the Banshees as "a massive influence on me [...] They were the group who led me towards doing Pornography. They drew something out of me". [17] In 1982, Smith also said that the "records he'd take into the bunker after the big bang", were Desertshore by Nico, Music for Films by Brian Eno, Axis: Bold as Love / Are You Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, Twenty Golden Greats by Frank Sinatra and The Early Piano Works by Erik Satie. [18] Release and reception [ edit ] Wolk, Douglas (October 2005). "The Cure: Pornography". Blender. No.41. Archived from the original on 23 November 2005 . Retrieved 2 November 2015.

Not for nothing did Cure fan and metal supremo Ross Robinson offer to produce one of The Cure’s later albums in 2004, in a conscious effort to get the band to record another similarly ‘angry and intense’ reprisal of his favourite album Pornography. However, the end result was a hugely uneven and disappointingly overwrought album which had none of the immediate devastating potency or claustrophobic intensity that Pornography served up, just somewhat inferior contrived attempts at familiar themes, which just goes to prove the old adage that any band can try and revisit or emulate their previous glories but seldom to the same degree of effectiveness.

a b Considine, J. D. (2 September 1982). " Pornography". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 13 October 2012. Sonically, at least, Pornography (the album) sounds like a completely different band from the last two albums, let alone their debut. It is hard to reconcile the sheer heaviness of the sound and the tropes and motifs expressed on this fourth album with the similarly downbeat but appreciably less chaotic lyrical themes on the previous two. The Cure: Pornography". Acclaimed Music. Archived from the original on 27 July 2013 . Retrieved 24 April 2013.

Released in May 1982, Pornography bore zero resemblance to anything else that was around at the time. Despite it surprisingly hitting the top ten at number eight and thus their most successful album to date (setting off a chain of consecutive top ten studio albums for the band which only ended in 1996), it was the ultimate party-pooper of a record when placed in direct contrast to everything else around it (mostly exponents from the aforementioned New Pop Renaissance). Its sheer impenetrable sense of nihilistic doom and existential angst immediately set it apart from the rest of their contemporaries. In 2017, Damnation A.D. released a cover version of the entire album. Xiu Xiu and Chelsea Wolfe covered "One Hundred Years" on Xiu Xiu's 2021 album Oh No.

Reviews

Of course, part of this stylistic overhaul could also be down to Smith originally having been clearly inspired by Siouxsie Sioux during their Juju era of 1981 as he has openly stated in many interviews how much ‘in awe’ he was of the sheer power of the Banshees’ sound around that time and thus harboured a desire to make a Cure record that took some of its sonic cues from that epochal Banshees recording and subsequent tour.

Recording sessions were chaotically stop-start, with the band getting ever more immersed in the twin evils of drink and drugs (the most infamous outcome of this ongoing overindulgence was the giant mountain/pyramid of empty beer cans they had assembled in one corner of the studio). Following the band's previous album, 1981's Faith, the non-album single " Charlotte Sometimes" was released. The single, in particular its nightmarish and hallucinatory B-side "Splintered in Her Head", would hint at what was to come in Pornography. [8] The Cure: Pornography" (Press release). Fiction Records . Retrieved 11 September 2013. From on-fiction.com Eventually the end result was a finished recording that sounded for all the world as uncompromisingly brutal as the troubled circumstances which helped bequeath it. According to Apter, Pornography would prove to be "enormously influential", and has been cited as an influence by bands such as Deftones and System of a Down. [8]

For Sale on Discogs

Breakthrough top 40 hit A Forest (number 31 in March 1980) distilled all of the album’s strongest elements into one near-six minute slice of post-punk perfection. It’s still one of the greatest ’80s singles of all time. Part of me wants to dismiss it's wanton gloominess as alot of self consciously stylised gothic nonsense but at the end of the day I can't help liking it. In its place were cryptically opaque, bleached out and foggy soundscapes built on sparse instrumentation: Dempsey’s replacement Simon Gallup’s simple basslines, new member Matthieu Hartley’s unobtrusive synth drones, and robotic machine-like drumming from Tolhurst, topped with Smith’s distant, almost disembodied vocals and his economical off-kilter guitar. God this is a great album. I bought it the first weekend it was released here in the uk, I was a huge alt. Indie fan at the time and a guitarist in a local indie band myself. I recall buying it but having some very strange looks from fellow bus passengers as I looked at the album cover on the way home. It must have been the word " Pornography" on the cover ?!?! Weird bus passengers ???? Me weird, oh no !!