Pornography

Product Information

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.

Nevertheless, one band who remained defiantly averse to much of this was The Cure, who chose relative low-key anonymity over the high-falutin’ jinks beloved of so many of their contemporaries, following a trajectory over their previous three albums from sprightly if somewhat geeky post-punkers to consummate doom-merchants, clearly taking some inspiration from one of the bands that supported them in 1979 – Joy Division. 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. Pornography not only spawned and influenced an entire new sub genre, it also set the template for many bands years afterwards to release similarly nihilistic and intensely unrelenting albums with themes of despair, alienation, and dystopian worldviews.There will always be endless debates about which exactly is everybody’s favourite Cure record. My obsession with the Pornography album did not happen immediately as I was still largely unaware of their music save for the two hit singles that they had prior to this (A Forest and Primary). I was still far too engrossed in buying the records of Siouxsie and The Banshees and a few of the electronic synth pop bands of the time to really take much notice, despite the obvious fact that The Cure was one of their contemporaries. Tolhurst, Lol (2016). Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. Da Capo Press. p.278. ISBN 9780306824289. Retrospective views of Pornography have been far more favourable. [8] In his biography of the Cure, Never Enough: The Story of the Cure, Jeff Apter wrote that it "turned out to be the kind of album—just like Lou Reed's Berlin or Bowie's coke-fueled Low—that required some distance and a good few years of music history to be really appreciated". [8] In 1995, Mark Coleman of Rolling Stone noted that Pornography had come to be "revered by Cureheads as a masterstroke", while noting that "normal listeners will probably find it impenetrable". [8] Stewart Mason of AllMusic found it to be "much better than most mainstream critics of the time thought", but at the same time "not the masterpiece some fans have claimed it to be" and "just a bit too uneven to be considered a classic". [24] In 2004, Jaime Gill of BBC Music singled out the album's "sonic depth and sheer relentless conviction" for praise, adding that without these qualities, its "extraordinary misanthropy would be laughable". [34] Uncut called Pornography "a masterpiece of claustrophobic self-loathing." [35] Out went their regular producer Mike Hedges, who helped craft the sonic ambience of their previous two albums, and in came a previously unknown engineer whom Smith decided to hand the reins to – Phil Thornalley. Smith was reportedly impressed with his work as assistant engineer on a Psychedelic Furs album the previous year (Talk Talk Talk), in particular the drum sound, so set to work on consciously writing drum patterns specifically tailored for the new material he was working on that would comprise the new album, which would be less downbeat and far more intense.

Roberts guitar sound here made me change my own guitar set up. I went out and bought a digital echo unit, placed upon the top of a mike stand, so I could easily manipulate the controls in real time during a live performance. I did not need to use any other effect pedals at all, just layers of tumbling echo.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] Secondly, the lyrics, a litany of unrelated snapshot horror imagery, line after line of seemingly unrelated scenarios of (social/political/metaphysical) discord and carnage. “Stroking your hair as the patriots are shot / Fighting for freedom on the television / Sharing the world with slaughtered pigs…” and then, apropos of nothing, the author then interjects “Have we got everything?…she struggles to get away…” Not an album for the faint hearted I would add. There's no Love Cats or Inbetween Days here folks, just sheer misery but such wondrous grand misery, the music peels out in a glorious manner.

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. Even to this day, very few albums sound like these two. And to be fair, not even The Cure themselves have ever equalled them, let alone surpassed them. But to be honest, they don’t need to. The legacy is completely perfect as it stands.Gill, Jaime (2 December 2004). "The Cure Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography (Deluxe Editions) Review". BBC Music . Retrieved 28 October 2012. 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. 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] However, no Cure album before or since has paired its cover imagery with its music as perfectly as Pornography has done.

Wolk, Douglas (October 2005). "The Cure: Pornography". Blender. No.41. Archived from the original on 23 November 2005 . Retrieved 2 November 2015. The band, Smith in particular, wanted to make the album with a different producer than Mike Hedges, who had produced Seventeen Seconds and Faith. According to Lol Tolhurst, Smith and Tolhurst briefly met with the producer Conny Plank at Fiction's offices in the hopes of having him produce the album since they were both fans of his work with Kraftwerk, [11] however, the group soon settled on Phil Thornalley. [8] Pornography is the last Cure album to feature Tolhurst as the band's drummer (he then became the band's keyboardist), and also marked the first time he played keyboards on a Cure release. [8] The album was recorded at RAK Studios from January to April 1982. [12] Funny but after all these years I still own my first pressing I bought in Leeds that Saturday afternoon in 1982. It's in beautiful mint condition and I'm going to give it a deep clean wash via Spin clean tomorrow and really listen to it again. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. 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).Polydor Records, the company in charge of Fiction, was initially displeased with the album's title, which it saw as being potentially offensive. [8] Music and influences [ edit ]