The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys Review

Listen to how far The Cure has come. We are lucky not every band starts, continues and ends up with a sound found on Songs of a Lost World. Incredibly poignant and fulfilling those moments may be, they are a far stretch from Three Imaginary Boys, the band’s punk debut which would prove massive for Robert Smith. Not in a commercial sense, but in a creative one. Smith now chooses the cover, the tracklist and all those creative decisions are his to make, and it is because of Three Imaginary Boys. Opener 10:15 Saturday Night would have us believe Three Imaginary Boys is a kitchen sink drama with punk thrills yet to come, but that is not the case. Those plodding guitar pieces which feel so chained to the upbeat functions of the time, just waiting to howl away into some darker night, are mouthwatering. 

When it does explode into that instrumental excess, Three Imaginary Boys remains liberatingly fun. Their skill is simplicity. Nothing goading to it, just a genuine desire to bring as many people as they can in before they switch off the lights and start turning on a ceiling fan with hammers attached. The Cure is frustratingly, frequently close to being a brutal shot of intrigue in a time when everyone and their mother was forming a punk band. But their time would come. Three Imaginary Boys remains solid. There are those slowed-down moments on Grinding Halt, the allusion to a sudden stop rather than the act itself being all the more joyous. But from there the meddlesome studioheads who pieced these songs together, their vision becomes the overriding concept. Three Imaginary Boys is an album of brilliant moments, but none of that can amount to the disappointment of what are, in hindsight, safe songs of love and lust.  

Take Another Day, the simplicity of those instrumental moments, the bass and percussion reliance, feels like a giddy teenage chancer. But The Cure in this moment of unique and undeveloped form, is fun. Scrappy fun. That is the best part of Three Imaginary Boys. Despite the interference, perhaps because of it, this feels cobbled together in the rooted punk way. Those screams at the end of Subway Song after a meandering bassline feels more like a shout against the album itself than a listener. Much of Three Imaginary Boys, while setting The Cure on a path to some of the best punk and rock songs of the time, feels very meandering and in the shadow of The Undertones. A slower start than many may have first expected, and yet the imagery associated with the album stands tall.  

There are a few moments of brilliance to be found within but ultimately these pieces of post-Sex Pistols punk remain flimsy. Soft jangle tones blurred with those attempts at being off-kilter and zany, as So What tries. It fails. But therein is the chance for change. Early moments for The Cure base themselves more on the what if, the possibilities of time in the studio, than anything else. Very little of what Smith and the band would become in later releases can be found here, but there is something still liberating and thoroughly enjoyable about the simpler joys of their sound. Fire in Cairo and the title track remain wonderful, late-stage moments on this album of generally limited, primitive but powerful sounds.