Pornography

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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. 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).

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] 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. 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. 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 ]

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a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Apter, Jeff (2006). Never Enough: The Story of The Cure. Omnibus Press. ISBN 1-84449-827-1. a b Mason, Stewart. " Pornography – The Cure". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 24 July 2018 . Retrieved 21 March 2018. 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.

Gill, Jaime (2 December 2004). "The Cure Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography (Deluxe Editions) Review". BBC Music . Retrieved 28 October 2012. 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. Wolk, Douglas (October 2005). "The Cure: Pornography". Blender. No.41. Archived from the original on 23 November 2005 . Retrieved 2 November 2015.

a b Considine, J. D. (2 September 1982). " Pornography". Rolling Stone . Retrieved 13 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] The Cure: Pornography". Acclaimed Music. Archived from the original on 27 July 2013 . Retrieved 24 April 2013. 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.Beaujon, Andrew (April 2005). "66.6 Greatest Moments in Goth". Spin. Vol.21, no.4. pp.70–73 . Retrieved 27 October 2012. Well, to be truthful, in light of what transpired a few weeks later when he took the band out on their Fourteen Explicit Moments tour, he had taken the Cure as far as they could possibly go down that particular road. Because the band self-destructed shortly afterwards after a fight at a bar in Strasbourg when Smith and Simon Gallup came to blows, the pressure of maintaining the sheer intensity of the material by having to perform it and the rigours of touring anyway, having a detrimental effect on the mental health and wellbeing of the entire band and their crew. Tolhurst, Lol (2016). Cured: The Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. Da Capo Press. p.278. ISBN 9780306824289.

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.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. Indeed, in 2003, The Cure performed all three albums in their entirely, in chronological sequence on a tour, which was later captured film and officially released as the DVD ‘Trilogy’. 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. 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. 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.