The Cure – Pornography Review

Establishing not a sound they would pursue for the rest of their careers but their image, The Cure’s Pornography is outstanding. It makes good on the Faith album before it, and gears up the band and listeners, too, for the lesser-known Japanese Whispers. Assured and confident tones are available from the very first moments of Pornography. The Cure makes such a huge change not to their lyrical venom or their ominous-sounding style, but to the production, to the confidence in the material at hand. Industrial-like pangs on opener One Hundred Years sets the scene with such conviction. This is the difference maker, a style which would benefit The Cure and their listeners for decades to come. Sincerity in the sinister is a fine blur to make and Pornography makes the most of it, a continually gothic but heartfelt encounter with death, caressing the face of your twilight years.  

Smith, a young writer around the time of Pornography, whittles away the horrors of death and its longevity, with great skill. About as complete a project as it gets for The Cure, until Disintegration, that is. Pornography remains one of their most daring yet accessible albums and part of that is through continuing the gothic horror tones well into their twilight years. Songs of a Lost World loosens the band’s grip, turning towards reflection once more, as was heard on Pornography. It creates a wonderful parallel where the fire has not yet been extinguished, merely been kindled differently. A song like One Hundred Years will go down as one of their best efforts, and the follow-up track A Short Term Effect does well to provide ballast to those overarching instrumental choices. The strained and wild guitar, the heavy percussion which continues throughout Pornography, all of it remains a consistently brutal and brilliant experience.  

Counter these darker and gloomy experiences, though, with the in-studio effect. Depression, addiction and fallout reign supreme. The Cure would chase a sound quite unlike this soon afterwards and it feels like a knock against the darker tones, the very real feelings of abandon and futility which spurn on the likes of The Hanging Garden. Brimstone and blood make for an astounding pairing on Siamese Twins, a sound which still defines The Cure. Their lighter hits like Boys Don’t Cry are tinged ever so slightly with these tones, and perhaps it is Smith’s unique voice which ties it all together. Laughter in the face of fear is what Pornography gets right, even if that message, the fundamentals of fearlessness, are lost in the studio. These parallels, the divide between how The Cure viewed themselves and what their record suggests, is part of the ever-growing charm of the band. 

The Figurehead may be the route through, too. An admission of change, the fear it cannot be undone. Pornography so frequently speaks in a finality which captures the unnerved studio experience, the feeling time will not stop, nor will our fears be resolved. Heavy pangs of percussion and a brooding writing style from Smith, particularly in latter tracks like A Strange Day, hear those fears. Macabre is a word too easily banded around The Cure but Pornography fits the bell. If the shoe fits… Pornography is a masterclass in tonal extremes, and while it may have been a nightmare of a recording, the very real fears and pains which come through in those heavy percussion moments on Cold feel crucially lived-in, giving The Cure that extra edge.