Release Date: 25 October, 1990
Audio CD
Tracks
- One Hundred Years
- Short Term Effect
- Hanging Garden
- Siamese Twins
- Figurehead
- Strange Day
- Cold
- Pornography
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Rating 5.0
1982 and all that1982 was my first year at university in London, Thatcher's sado-monetarism was adding to the worldwide recession and squeezing the economy dead, ten of thousands of people were losing their jobs every month, but everything was supposedly OK because Britain had just stuffed the Argies in a nice little war: oh, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. The Cure's wonderful "Pornography" was the perfect album for that year. With Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" and "Closer", one had a ready-made selection of tunes for all kinds of student party.I apologize for this ratingFirst of all, let me just say that I have been a huge Cure fan for about 15 years, and I still consider them my favorite band. It seems to me that most Cure fans seem to put "Pornography" right under "Disintegration" as the band's best album. "Disintegration" happens to be one of my all time favorites (and "Faith" is right up there), but, regrettably, I can't say the same thing for "Pornography," and, in fact, I prefer a number of the band's other albums.
I find "Pornography" to be overwhelmingly bleak, despairing and hopeless, which is not necessarily a bad thing (especially for Cure fans), but this album just doesn't let you come up for air. I love the tribal beat of "Hanging Garden" which I think is one of the band's best songs. Uncharacteristically, Lol Tolhurst shows some profficiency on the drums, and Simon Gallup is his usual brilliant self on the bass. Although the lyrics for the song are obscure, as they are for the entire album, "Hanging Garden" seems to me to be about animal abuse and experimentation. For instance, the line "wearing furs and masks" might refer, not only to animals themselves, but to people wearing fur coats and make-up. Remember, make-up companies are notorious for testing on animals.
Following "Hanging Garden," are the similar tracks "Siamese Twins" and "The Figurehead." In the latter, I can't decide which is bleaker, the music or the lyrics. But on the "bleakness and dispair" scale, "Figurehead" is blown away by the penultimate track "Cold," perhaps one of the most depressing and unsettling songs I ever heard. For the finale, the title track seems appropriate for the depiction of someone descending into Hell itself.
Throughout "Pornography," Robert Smith wails about death, war, sickness, loss, and the general degradation and perversion of society. It is just too extreme for my tastes, and is clearly The Cure at their most depressing. Their next album was the bouncy "Japanese Whispers." Can anybody think of another band that released two consecutive albums so unlike each other?The Dark TrilogyPornography (The Cure), Closer (Joy Division) and Sleep No More (The Comsat Angels) are with little doubt the three darkest albums of the early eighties - Pornography has the distinction of not only being one of the darkest, but comparable to Throbbing Gristle's 'Second Annual Report' (the forward version) as the most frightening.... |
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