Japanese Whispers [Import]

The Cure | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 5, 1987)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Polygram UK
• ASIN: B000005S0B
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,876 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #48 in Music > Imports > Alternative Rock
  • #73 in Music > Alternative Rock > Goth & Industrial > Goth

Track Listings

1. Let's Go To Bed

2. The Dream

3. Just One Kiss

4. The Upstairs Room

5. The Walk

6. Speak My Language

7. Lament

8. The Lovecats

Editorial Reviews

1983 singles collection featuring the 7 inch versions of three singles ('Let's Go To Bed', 'The Walk' & 'The Love Cats') and five of the B-sides from these singles ('The Dream', 'Just One Kiss' (7 inch version), 'The Upstairs Room', 'Speak My Language' and 'Lament'. Unavailable domestically. Fiction / Universal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Fun Than Before But Not Disposable, February 19, 2004

By 

SandmanVI (Glen Allen, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Japanese Whispers (Audio CD)

Some of the harsh criticism here from the darkling seeds is unwarranted and shows their lack of range, while this release showed the band increasing their musical boundaries. True that it is more pop I suppose, but it was hardly mainstream at the time. "The Walk" is the closest they ever came to synth pop, but it still had a haunting tone and mysterious subject matter. So did "LaMent", the tale of a dead young girl whose body is seen drifting under a bridge; the corpse is poetically described as the "ice cream river body" probably describing the diffuse, blurry way the submerged body would look - this song feels a bit like "Charlotte Sometimes without the bass. Also dark and mysterious is the nervous, paranoid "The Upstairs Room". Hold on, I'm getting a theme here. This album may have been bouncy and had some beat but it was still quite morose and way left of center. In fact, most Cure fans I know loved this collection of 3 singles. For sure, it wasn't there best, more of a short, sweet anomaly... but certainly not bad.

"Let's Go to Bed" was maybe their 1st U.S. hit before "Head on the Door". It's fun and takes a playful approach to sex; it was a refreshing shift from their previous stuff. "Lovecats" is one of the most refreshing hit records ever written with its charming standup bass usage, boppy rhythm and Robert actually doing a bebop scat thing of some sort... a classic by any standard.

Stated shortly, this was a very strong release that just happened to be a departure from previous releases. And here's a note to Rozzy and others who are probably a bunch of 13-year-old Goths (nothing against 13-year-old Goths... I may have been one)... I was alive at the time this came out and actually to listening to it as it was released - not some modern collector looking back 20 years after the fact. This album was enjoyed by Cure fans at the time who loved the blackest moments from before but needed a change just to keep the music alive. Variety is the spice, ain't it?

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A New Language, November 3, 2000

By 

Greg Hughes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Japanese Whispers (Audio CD)

"Japanese Whispers" is an album that marks a departure point for the Cure. This is where the music was starting to become more commercial, after the bleak, tormented, soul-wrenching anguish of "Faith" and "Pornography".

"Let's Go to Bed" was Robert Smith's attempt to write "a silly pop song". Apparently Smith hated the song so much he wanted to release it under a pseudonym. Luckily he was talked out of it.

Every Cure fan will know the hit single "Lovecats" of course. At the same time this album came out the Cure film-clips were starting to look more exciting, thanks to the creativity of Tim Pope. In the clip to "Lovecats" Robert Smith doesn't look the least bit depressed. "The Walk" is one of those songs that sticks in my head. It's very 1983.

"Japanese Whispers" is a neat little package of songs. This is one of the first steps in the evolution of the Cure musically, after being fashionably depressing, then darkly depressing, then morbidly depressing. It takes the Cure out of the murky swamp of despair into the light of wider acclaim. (Although these songs still appealed to alternative listeners.)

This was the first album to prove that the Cure isn't all gloom and doom. They showed a quirky side too.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice, poppy yet interesting deviation from usual cure..., September 30, 2005

By 

Bill Wikstrom (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Japanese Whispers (Audio CD)

I honestly don't know how terrible it must have been to have your
gothy mascara run (from the tears) after hearing The Cure daring to deviate from their one-dimentional gloomy course before becoming a parody of themselves and release the refreshingly lighthearted, fun single "Let's Go To Bed".
I'm sure it was a bitter pill to swallow (giggle).

Don't get me wrong. Seventeen Seconds is my favorite Cure album but I think this collection of synth-heavy songs should not be dismissed just because of its' not-so-goth pop (as opposed to their familliar goth pop) status.

Sire records issued the six song The Walk EP (later they issued Japanese Whispers & The Top), which is basically the same as JW minus "Lovecats" and "Language".
I listened to that tape untill I wore it out.

Some of these songs are up there with their best material.
"The Upstairs Room" is brilliantly catchy and original.
"Just One Kiss" is chillingly perfect Cure and would not have been out of place on Disintigration (same goes for "Lament").

"Let's Go To Bed", "The Walk" and "The Dream" are all great catchy idiosyncratic pop songs.

Their "It's got to be jazz" sloganeering on the "Lovecats"
single sleeve may have been a bit of a mis-step, but proved enjoyable all the same.
As "Speak My Language" is a starting reference point for boozy Smith ramblings.
A fine little stop-gap release!