The Cure - Japanese Whispers

Japanese Whispers (1983) ***

Purging his wrist-slashing fantasies with the Goth Trilogy (Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography), Robert Smith reemerges smack in the decadent coke-snorting '80s as a poofy-haired synth-rocker.  The brite, New Romantic synth-pop tunes on this compilation of singles aren't that far removed from the brite, punkish guitar-pop tunes circa 1979; the dedication to hookcraft has returned, and melodies are likewise the most memorable since the debut.  Expanding from a trio on the debut to a four-piece at this point, the sound is denser and more fleshed out, but still relatively minimalist compared to later Cure albums' excesses - I said relatively.  There are only eight songs, and the three best are available on the Staring At Her Breasts: The Swinging Singles compilation, so this is hardly essential for a casual fan.  Your typical Cure album follows the "three or four really good potential singles surrounded by a bunch of merely ordinary songs" pattern, and this is no exception.  "Lament," and "Just One Kiss," sound like goth-period outtakes, if only a teensy bit brighter and lighter.  "The Dream," the only truly bad song on here, bases itself around an annoyingly simplistic three-note synthesizer riff.  "The Walk," and its b-side, "The Upstairs Room," are grim adventures in Eurodisco.  "Speak My Language," and "The Love Cats," are also of a piece, both wonderfully frothy bounces of fluff, based around tinkly-winkly bouncing piano lines.  One crucial insight that I gain from this record into Smith's personality is that he's a cat, not dog, person.  "Fires outside in the sky look  as perfect as cats!" he coos in "Let's Go To Bed," in which he pretends that he doesn't care about getting laid as a ploy to convince a girl to go to bed with him.   A perfectly normal human sentiment; we all feel that love/sex/romance/whatever you want to call it, is a "stupid game" sometimes - the thing about Smith's lyrics about depression and alienation is that they're a lot more universal (and banal) than his goth narcissism supposes. In sum, a pretty good to average Cure album, take it or leave it.  I don't care if you don't.



The Cure - Boys Don't Cry

Boys Don't Cry (1979) ****

The original U.K. version was entitled Three Imaginary Boys; this is a butcher job issued for the American market that deletes several album cuts and replaces them with stronger singles. Well, I for one am not going to shed a tear for their cover of Hendrix's "Foxy Lady," and the added singles that are "too poppy" for the gloom'n'doom Cure fans expect to the fit the mood of this album - screw the Cure fans, the singles were singles for a reason, and that's because they're catchier and more melodic than the albums tracks, and since when are bright, catchy pop songs a bad thing?  Oh, that's right, only if you're a mope freak.  But this isn't mopey music, contrary to the Cure's reputation.  Oh sure, it's moody, but it's too energetically and punkily played for moping.  Note I said punkily, not punk.  They were influenced by punk, alright, but so was every new, hip band in 1979.  The guitars are thin (like the Talking Heads), not buzzsaw chunky, and the mood is brooding, not angry - the only real bout of agression is a bit of Stranglers-level misogyny, "Object".  Even when the songs slow to a crawl the rhythms have a sharp bounce; the guitars play truncated notes that are called 'angular', that is when melody lines and notes are abruptly foreshortened. 

A Trouser Press review called this "a unique, intelligent halfway point between the Gang of Four and the Jam," which doesn't make much sense since the Cure at this point sound nothing like either.  It's more like a unique, intelligent halfway point between early Wire (the band use minimalist hooks to make the most out of their rudimentary musicianship, resulting in a thin and amateurish but compelling sound) and Joy Division (the whole Goth thing).  Throw in some Siouxsie & the Banshees (their big sister band at that point), the Talking Heads (reedy guitar lines), Bowie (in the vocal inflections, and so what else is new?), and the Stranglers' grimy evocation of the seedy urban underbelly ("Subway Song" is thematically a rewrite of "In the Shadows").  As a basic three-piece still in the process of mastering their instruments, the sound is far too thin; some keyboards or an extra guitar player certainly would have beefed things up for the better.  But perhaps that's for the best - the stark minimalism on their debut goes easier on my ears than the overproduced maximalism of their late-period records. 

Though their big hits would arrive much later in their career, this is the most direct and easily accessible music the Cure have ever produced.  Maybe because it's simply the most energetic, and it doesn't hurt that the songs are the shortest.  The hooks of the title track and "Jumping Someone Else's Train" get straight to the point, and "Fire In Cairo," certainly has a unique chorus hook of spelling the title out, which helpfully allows record buyers to remember when they're shopping for the single.  Was it a single?  Well, "Killing an Arab," was - a banned single in certain places, but don't get worked up, it's a reference to Camus' The Stranger.  Never heard of that book?  Don't worry, neither did George Bush until Bono lent him a copy.  Nothing racist about the song, though it's easy to see why it got misinterpreted.  Probably not the wisest course of action to play with such fire during a period of history when Britain's right-wing National Front goon squad was at their strongest, but hey, nobody gives the Clash too much flack for "White Riot".