From “BOYS DON’T CRY” to “BLOODFLOWERS”: The Cure’s 6 best albums

“The Cure are responsible for a whole bunch of bad bands out there, all trying to copy them,” Wire singer Colin Newman noted in 2002. In order for a whole bunch of bad bands to try to copy you in the first place, you first need a bunch of good albums – and The Cure have that to show for it.

ME editor Oliver Götz listed the five best albums by Robert Smith’s band for the ME hero treatise on The Cure 2012. Here you will find an overview of this selection:

BOYS DON’T CRY (1980)

While this isn’t the “real” debut, BOYS DON’T CRY, compiled as the first longplay release for the US market, is preferable to THREE IMAGINARY BOYS.

The compilation dispenses with half-baked titles like “Object” or the borderline Hendrix cover “Foxy Lady”, but contains the first three singles: the mysterious, at the same time aggressive “Killing An Arab”, the immensely clingy “Boys Don’t Cry” and the wonderfully fast and tight “Jumping Someone Else’s Train”. The Cure weren’t as strict as Wire or clever as XTC – but as a post-punk greeting from the provinces that is as laconic as it is full of hits, this record should not be underestimated.

17 SECONDS (1980)

Cold, colder, 17 SECONDS. The Cure are firmly in Robert Smith’s hands, and he has transformed into the Ice Queen.

The record sounds correspondingly treble-heavy: in the two-finger keyboard melodies, the cutting rhythm guitar and the whipping drums. Only the striking bass, so typical of The Cure, sets a counterpoint. This sound design pulls the whole album together to the size of an igloo. Crouching inside, Smith can be heard whispering and pleading as if in a jammed transmission.

Pieces like “A Reflection”, “Secrets” and “Three” remain atmospheric sketches. But also some “real” songs hardly move from the spot and still push their way through the gray like ice floes. The counterpoint here: the New Wave dance floor sweepers “A Forest” and “Play For Today”.

PORNGRAPHY (1982)

A 43-minute nightmare in eight acts. Sometimes violently angry, with tribal drums and a tangle of guitars, bass and keyboards, which is completely dragged through the flanger turned up to the limit and other alienating devices. Then again an excruciatingly sluggish march to the place of sacrifice. Smith howls: “Dancing in my pocket/Worms eat my skin”.

It’s an apocalypse with a message: “My attitude was: Everything is crap, we’re crap too, so let’s go with a bang,” says Smith in a 2003 interview. And that they hardly slept at the time, but would have consumed all the more intoxicants. Producer Phil Thornay, on the other hand, says: It wasn’t all that bad.

PORNGRAPHY is definitely bad. The mother of all goth rock records. Immediately unwinds the genre while it is still in its infancy.

THE HEAD ON THE DOOR (1985)

The following double album KISS ME KISS ME KISS ME has even nicer songs. It’s a double album though, with a few superfluous tracks hanging out at the ends. Therefore: THE HEAD ON THE DOOR.

The specific, overcast and fundamentally gloomy Cure sound meets the hook-loving pop of the eighties and that meets the high spirits of trying out everything possible stylistically. Flamenco guitars, mystical Japanese melodies, synth pop etc. – everything works! The two hits “In Between Days” and “Close To Me” anyway.

DISINTEGRATION (1989)

Like VIOLATOR, released a year later for Depeche Mode – the other great survivor of the ’80s – DISINTEGRATION is the record that the majority of fans can agree on: as the culmination of what defines The Cure.

The 1,000 tears deep “Plainsong” is one of the most solemn album openers in pop history. He sets the program: the band lays layers upon layers, melodies upon even more melodies, melancholy upon even more melancholy, and allows themselves endless amounts of time for this. Less worn pop hits like “Lullaby” and “Lovesong” remain dreamy enough to ingratiate themselves into the album context.

Smith was said to have had the thought of creating a really big album before his 30th birthday. DISINTEGRATION was released ten days after this. More The Cure was not possible with the best will in the world.

BLOOD FLOWERS (2000)

The belated, not so desperate attempt to once again underline The Cure’s status as pop’s ultimate melancholy band. According to Robert Smith, he is doing a trilogy together with PORNOGRAPHY and DISINTEGRATION. You might not have to go that far. But definitely the best of the band’s “late” works.