The Vinyl Files Part 7 ... The Cure - Japanese Whispers (1983)

Having released four albums by the end of 1982 - or five if you count Three Imaginary Boys (UK) and Boys Don’t Cry (US) as entirely separate works, which I don’t - each one markedly gloomier than the last, The Cure had reached something of a crossroads. 

The recording, release, and touring phases of the band’s desperately bleak fourth studio album, Pornography, had highlighted all sorts of problems, not the least of which were issues around Robert Smith’s depression, infighting over the band’s artistic direction, and debilitating levels of hard drug use. An alignment of events which took The Cure to the precipice, staring into a self-destructive abyss. It’s all there, laid bare, on Pornography. Which may or may not be the reason many Cure fans cite the album as the band’s pivotal work. 

Bassist Simon Gallup (temporarily) left the band after Pornography, and across late 1982 and all of 1983, The Cure embarked on a slightly more upbeat pop-embracing path, with Robert Smith honing his song-writing skills and repositioning himself as a master of the quirky love song. With that shift in focus came a series of standalone single releases and an EP - The Walk - and it’s those tracks which formed the core of what would prove to be the first (of 11, to date) Cure compilation albums, Japanese Whispers.

But Japanese Whispers was no ordinary compilation. It wasn’t a standard “best of” or “greatest hits” to-date set, and it concerned itself only with tracks which hadn’t featured on any of that first quartet of albums. Indeed, Japanese Whispers was simply a collection of the band’s post-Pornography singles through the late 1982 to late 1983 period. So, three singles - ‘Let’s Go To Bed’, ‘The Walk’, and ‘The Love Cats’ - and the associated B-sides, making it eight tracks all up. Yet oddly enough, it tends to play out like a regular album, and to my ears it’s a far more coherent piece of work than the transitional mixed bag studio album which followed in 1984, The Top. 

I suspect Japanese Whispers served as a softcore introduction for many US-based listeners, or any new pop-loving Cure fans emerging in the wake of increased radio play. Which itself was a direct result of the band’s commitment to a rather more inclusive “pop” aesthetic. The fact that ‘The Love Cats’ had given The Cure its first Top 10 hit (in the UK, at least) perhaps tells its own story. 

I’m really not 100 percent certain how this came to be in my vinyl collection. I have an idea, but I certainly can’t recall ever purchasing it, despite owning all of the previous Cure work on either vinyl or cassette. None of which survived the great enforced collection cull of 1992/1993. I mean, I’m a fan of the band, and I’ve subsequently replaced the stuff I sold with CDs or digital files, yet still, here sits Japanese Whispers, in all of its black wax glory, my only actual Cure “record”, a shiny happy testament to a band in recovery mode, and I can’t recall quite how it got there. 

(The Vinyl Files is a short series of posts covering the best items in your blogger’s not very extensive vinyl collection)

Classic Album Review: The Cure - Pornography (1982)

Having been a fan of everything The Cure released prior to Pornography, I recall being fairly quick off the mark to pick up a copy as soon as it came out. I also remember feeling a little underwhelmed and generally pretty disappointed with it, and my opinion on the album hasn’t changed much in the intervening years.

I guess what I appreciated most about The Cure’s earliest stuff was the simple structure of many of the songs, and an almost minimalist approach to making pop music. Yet with each new album from early 1979 through to 1981 – from Boys Don’t Cry through Seventeen Seconds to Faith – the band’s sound became much fuller and increasingly more complex. By album number four, Pornography, simplicity and modest pop forms were evidently the last things on Robert Smith’s mind.

 

I don’t mind the darker angst-ridden stuff (some would say I live for it, even) – see reviews for Seventeen Seconds and Faith – but Pornography always felt like one suicidal step too far; too dense, too bleak, with too much gloomy synth, and a touch too much wailing or generally indecipherable vocals. Maybe it’s just a production thing, but it doesn’t work for me.

I realise Pornography is the album most likely to feature at the very summit of many Cure fans’ “best ever” lists, I’ve even seen it cited as Smith’s masterpiece, but it still rates well down the list for me; ahead of some of the band’s more frivolous and lightweight pop excursions certainly, but below the likes of Seventeen Seconds, Disintegration, Faith, Boys Don’t Cry, The Head On The Door, and even Bloodflowers.

Nonetheless, ‘The Hanging Garden’ remains one of the band’s best singles, ‘One Hundred Years’ is a strong opener, and ‘A Strange Day’ is another obvious highlight on Pornography. The rest I could probably live without.