Customer Reviews

Pornography

5 star:		(104)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unquestionably this was Robert Smith's darkest hour. This 8-track release is oppressive in its bleak attack. It deserves 5 stars due to its sheer brilliance and originally; nothing ever sounded like this before or since. But for newcomers reading these great reviews be forewarned - I did not use the word oppressive by accident. Every moment of 'Pornography' is black, despeairing and tortured. If you are on the verge of suicide this could be a rope thrown to save you or it could be a mack truck with a plow on the front driving you further over the edge. If you can get past that then what you will find is a stunningly creative album that creates some of the most sepulchral music ever heard.

The band at this time was stripped down to 3 members: Smith on vocals and guitar and keyboards, Simon Gallup on bass, and Lawrnece Tolhurst on drums. Strangely it may have been Tolhurst's lack of musical talent (an issue that would later get him fired) that created much of the atmosphere. The drumming is very flat and mechanical sounding creating an absolutely dead feel throughout; even sound dies as the stick hits the skins. Smith's voacl sound desperate and often deranged filled with lurid, bizzare imagery. Gallup's bass is potent and overwhelming in a style that only he could pull off.

My favorites are "One Hundred Years" with its sense of desperation and unrequited longing. "A Short Term Effect" is saturated with doom as the characters of the song try to laugh in the face of what may come, "Something small falls out of your mouth and we all laugh". "A Strange Day" is angst-ridden but with soemthing bordering on beauty buried deep within. Finally the title track is an complete descent into madness, as the closer on an album like this should be.

One of the great black-to-the-core albums ever and arguably the darkest. The Sisters of Mercy came close with the rare 'Reptile House EP', but that work is more of an exploration of drug-addicted frustration where this is just suffocating hopelessness.

I write this review after many years of listening to the album, and after having heard a variety of bands merely attempt to capture the brooding gothic grace this album possesses...but never succeeded. The only band I feel that even remotely came close was Autumn and their debut album "The Hating Tree." But that is another review.

All in all, this is probably one of the Cure's best albums, if not the best. Sure Robert Smith & Co. has churned out albums with more cohesion and production value over the years, and he's always been a very powerful musician lyrically and emotionally. However, "Pornography" captures raw emotions, and much of the time, the rawest emotions are those of love, longing, despair, and rage. And this is the Cure at their angriest. The album is dark and even depressing, but never so much sad as it is angry. The power of songs like "The Hanging Garden" and "One Hundred Years" hits the listener with a full-on aural assault that will leave you shaking your fists in the air with each listen. It's not without its element of sadness (it wouldn't be the Cure if it lacked in melancholy...even their happy stuff could bring a tear to the eyes, and I'm not talking about the so-called hardcore fans who think the Cure had to be sad to be good. I LIKE "Friday, I'm in Love.").

Did I mention anger? Robert Smith's signature wailing voice even sounds angry, though not in a cheesy death metal sorta way, but in that way that his voice alone is an instrument of his despair. The music is solid, showing the Cure (a trio at the time) at their tightest, especially the percussion. Not unlike Joy Division's "Closer," another gothic masterpiece where the percussion didn't receive just attention, but was vital to the sound and presentation of the music.

Overall, this is probably raw emotion at its best when it comes to the Cure, the band that brought Goth to the mainstream. Those who think it's great because its sad are missing the point. It could be happy and joyful, and I'd probably still like it, as long as it was genuine. "Friday, I'm in Love" may have been candy-coated happy pop, but at least Robert Smith doesn't kid his audience into thinking that mope is the way to go to be a good musician. For this reason, "Pornography" is my second favorite Cure album...next to "Disintegration." This album is a classic...listen and feel the power.

When you cannot unlock the tears of catharsis, Pornography, The Cure's fourth album, is the key. On par with "Closer" by Joy Division and the self-titled Velvet Underground album. When your world is at its end and you are about to cash in your check, this album, this masterpiece, will pull you back from the edge and show you the light that can only be found on the other side of despair. A must for teenagers who are at a point in their life when music has the power to change everything.

I'm 26 and a bit more cynical now, but I'll never be ashamed to admit to tears when, as a 15 year old suburban kid,I discovered this album. Boys do cry. Sometimes it's their salvation.

skillfully written lyrics with masterful singing, this album fights well with disintegration. of course this album was written earlier in time and more importantly, had a much less professional sound but regardless expressed what it needed to. It covers almost anything about general deprsesion: One Hundred Years uses war as the feeling of time lasting forever under depression, A Short Term Effect makes life analogies with a theme of drugs, The Hanging Garden talks about how life needs to end for others to begin and uses the imagery of slaughterhouses, Siamese Twins talks about one-night stands and people trapped in lust, The Figurehead is religious confessions about a relationship, A Strange Day is about being disabled, Cold is about the sudden end of a relationship, and Pornography is about murder. This album on its own reflects The Cure's band name right on its own...the last line ends with "I must fight this sickness, find a cure..." Being the darkest cure album before they went pop (and oh my god were they talented at that), it's a great listen for any teenager starting to feel alienation because of growing up. It'll be your best friend telling you its alright because you aren't alone.

Everybody should listen to this album once, at night when they can't sleep turning on the night light and spreading out the lyrics.

It'll be an experience.

A lot of critics have described the early Cure music as depressing and maudlin. That would probably be an appropriate description for the album "Pornography". Especially when the first words heard on the album are "It doesn't matter if we all die." And then there's lines like "Worms eat my skin" or "I'll watch you drown in the shower".

As with funerals, this album tends to make you think about death, the bleak, pointless futility of a meaningless world, and a lot of other nihilistic things that were probably going through Robert Smith's head at the time. The fact that Smith was suffering a personal crisis of some sort would have helped.

If you're feeling depressed, this album will make you feel even worse. The songs on "Pornography" are a stark contrast to the work on a later album such as "Wild Mood Swings", which is mainly "up". But I actually prefer "Pornography" to "W.M.S.".

This is a very gloomy, apocalyptic album, characterised by wailing vocals, slow death-like drumming and a throbbing bass. The nearest thing to a happy song on this album would be its single "The Hanging Garden"(which isn't very happy at all). With the song "Pornography", if you ignore the vocals and the drumming the background music sounds like the music used in "Doom".

You may have to listen to this album a few times to get used to it. But once you do you'll be taken in by its "charm".

A gothic masterwork and the height of the Cure's second phase, this album is undoubtably dark, eerie and, yes, depressing. It's also often very beautiful at the same time. Much of what colors in the darkness here is the drum sound which emphasises bass and de-emphasises higher register percussion. Simon Gallup's bass guitar compliments the moods movingly and assuredly, while the hallucinatory guitar work and voice of Robert Smith swirls in the center.

Opening track "One Hundred Years" casts an apocalyptic shadow of impending doom and destruction over the proceedings ("over and over we die one after the other"). The next track, "A Short Term Effect" is a wierd one, like being in a room of shifting walls and ghosts. This can be attributed to Smith's atmospheric backwards guitar and vocal manipulations as well as the merciless drums and wavering beat. "The Hanging Garden" makes a worthy, intense single, but the heart of the album is "Siamese Twins" and "The Figurehead" with gorgeously grim lyrics of fear, isolation and loathing. Then "A Strange Day," one of the Cure's very best songs, offers a ray of hope via escapism. This song also features one of the rare moments when Smith plays a solo guitar segment with no other instruments - the purpose is to illustrate the feeling of being instantly hit by the memory of a song. Particularly gloomy is "Cold" which features what sounds like a dreary classical bass played with a bow, more brutal drums and icey keys. Finally, the closing title track sounds like some scary torture chamber scene. From my point of view, it's one of those songs that are better appreciated stoned because you're more able to sort out the whirlwind of sounds, otherwise it's kinda hard to make out an actual song here. The muddled voices at the beginning and end of the track are especially freaky.

I definately warped my little teenage mind in the 80's playing this album regularly. I suppose I have an unnatural appreciation for all things goth, grim and disturbing, but it's worth it to see the beauty and pain from the other sides of life.

Regarding the title "Pornography." I happen to know that while Robert Smith can appreciate eroticism, he abhors pornography. I imagine he tried to think of one of the worst things in the world to illustrate how he felt at the time.

"It doesn't matter if we all die" whimpers Robert Smith on "One Hundred Years," the kickoff track from this 1982 album by the Cure. With an opening line like that, you don't need to be a psychic to predict what the rest of "Pornography" is going to sound like. Originally released by A&M records some twenty-odd years ago, "Pornography" was dismissed by some critics, including Rolling Stone, which gave the album a one-and-a-half star rating. But in the years since its release (and particularly following the Cure's rise to fame in America), "Pornography" has been hailed as a gothic masterpiece, a morbid offering that helped raise mope rock to the level of art. Looking for the perky flavor of "Inbetween Days?" This isn't it. Each song creates a dark and dismal landscape that's just as powerful as Joy Division's "Closer." The tribal drums of "The Hanging Garden," the moody "Figurehead," and the creepy title track still sound great after two decades. "Pornography" may be the Cure's best record; doom and gloom have never sounded this fun.

Pornography is my favorite album from The Cure, and is one of my favorite records of all time. Expletives which capture the feeling of Pornography include; dark, rocking, spooky, lush, morbid, strange, ugly, beautiful, brilliant, frightening, calming. I could go on and on, really, but that whole list was getting redundant. I'll say right now that this album is brilliant and beautiful and is the greatest Cure product on the market. If you'd like to leave now, I'd suggest it, because i'm about to over-analyze the whole record.

One Hundred Years - The first track on Pornography is the tense excersize in abstract and nightmarish imagery. The verses jump, in an almost dream-like fashion from topics of death and pain, to lyrical paintings describing things to the last detail ("Just a piece of meat in a clean room, the soldiers close in under a yellow moon, all shadows and deliverance, under a black flag, a hundred years of blood, crimson, the ribbon tightens round my throat". Further proving that Robert Smith is one of the truly great poetic lyricists of our time or that he did a lot of drugs. 8/10

A Short Term Effect - Slowing the pace from One Hundred Years to a dragging beat over-ridden with a declining bass line and the dream-like, effect ladden, lead guitar parts and vocals from Robert Smith. More of the abstract lyric stylings found in "One Hundred Years", less abbrasive as the first track, and yet still leaves and eerie aftertaste in your mouth and a feeling of discomfort in the back of your head. 9/10

The Hanging Garden - One of the key tracks on the album. This could very well be the best song they've written. Driving tom's push you through a fabric of layered guitar effects, and the urgent bass line. Containing some of the most vivid lyrics written by Robert Smith. Definitely one of the best songs on the album. 10/10

Siamese Twins - Starting off with hypnotic chimes over an equally soothing and downbeat drum part, and then gradually revealing the swirling guitars. More abstract lyrics with the Robert Smith trademark vocal treatments. 8/10

The Figurehead - Similar in style to "One Hundred Years" this, the first track on the second half of the record, accounts for a painful look at self-loathing lyricism. The music swells and breaks methodically, to almost the point of leaving you feeling suffocated by the sounds, and then gradually fades out towards the end. 9/10

A Strange Day - This song has an almost aquatic feel to it, as the keyboards waver in and out as Smith indulges in more of his abstract lyricism, and just as the hopeful chorus breaks in and leaves you feeling relieved as you are led to believe the boo-hoo-i'm-sad music is finally behind you, they bring you back down as though pulling the safety blanket out from under your feet. We're not done yet kids! Robert Smith needs his paycheck! Que awesome guitar bridge. 8/10

Cold - Uh oh. You hear those opening notes and the dreary drumbeat and you know that this hallucinogin inspired masterpiece isn't over just yet. The instruments build and build as Robert Smith's lyrics become darker and vocally become more urgent. This is the big lead up to the sad-bastard grand finale of the record.

Pornography - Congratulations, you've reached the end, and if you're lucky haven't slit your wrists yet! And now you're about to live through the weirdest, most lyrically abstract, and darkest piece of music that you've probably ever heard in your life. The drum beat pushes against your temples like nothing else on this record, as the completely bleak music crowds into your headspace, with the added bonus of completely hopeless vocals which are lost within a barrage of alien sounds and voices. 10/10

So that wraps up my over-indulgent look at my favorite record of all time from The Cure. If you think you've heard music about as dark as it gets and you haven't heard this album, you haven't even experienced the half of it. However, if you have heard this and do know of a darker, more sensory-wrenching piece of work, let me know, cause i'm curious as to know how you lived through it.

ESSENTIAL!!

There is no hope, no direction, and no point left in the world. And no one will ever do anything about it. We are handicapped by time and by our mortality. If we were to live for a hundred years we would still be as ineffectual. The only thing we know is death and blood. Life is a heartless babysitter waiting to be relieved of her duties.

This is my interpretation of The Cure's Pornography. The real beauty is that The Cure declares this messege without having to sound stupid, like I do. The work is abstract and implied, but where as that could become annoying, they balance it with lyrics and music that are powerful and straight forward. There are lines you can get behind like a picketer.

For an album you can get in the crusty "Gothic" section, this album stays clear of the main pothold of gothic/dark music; it doesn't ask for pitty. We are all in it together, but "it" is nothing, and we are nothing. So whatever.

As an album that didn't come out during a great war, it does feel like post-World War literature. It's as nihilistic as a soldier realising he isn't dead, but buried permanently in a mass grave. Surrounded by bodies.

But The Cure says none of this. This is only what I have to say about it.

Musically, it has the strongest guitar work of sll the albums, and the addictive drums make the tracks feel more like acts of a play. Drums that sound like a beating that never ends. Or Changes. Yes, drums that never change, like how life never changes. Get it?

It is impossible for me to be able to judge the actual music, I have simply listened to the album too many times to do that. The album is a feeling and I cannot seriously rate a feeling.

It's a feeling of ennui, but, it is respectable because it rebels from it. It's not simply about nothingness, but the rebellion against nothingness. It's a report; look at the state of the world-- What is this garbage?

But then again, it is also nothing of this.

I think the other reviewers have described the bleakness and brilliance of this album much more poetically than I'll be able to, but here I go anyway. This is definitely one of the darkest albums of the 80's, and even of all time. There's no album in existence that really comes close to the sound on this one, except maybe "Disintegration." The Cure is one of my favorite bands of all time, and it's a testament to their genius that they can manage to make songs with the same instruments and vocals that can be so gloomy and oppressive one minute and then poppy and cheerful the next. (Don't believe me? Check out "Japanese Whispers," which was released right after Pornography.) The entire album is like suffocating in despair. "A Strange Day" almost fools you into thinking there may be a break in the clouds with its poetic chorus, the guitars that seem to be waking and stretching after distant riffs and gloom, and the vocals that invoke a feeling bordering on peaceful; but for me this is the most depressing song on the album. In the end, this isn't a song of freedom from a crushing despair, but a song of giving in to it. For me it's heartbreaking to listen to, but it's also the most beautiful song on the album.

"Siamese Twins" is a masterpiece. As far as I can tell, no two people think the same thing or interpret the lyrics in the same way. And even if you can't make head or tails of it, the music that seems to reek of guilt and Robert Smith's tortured voice can move you to tears. I personally think it's about guilt after betraying someone. It has imagery that can haunt you. "She glows and grows, with arms outstretched/Her legs around me/In the morning I cried."

"A Hundred Years" and "The Hanging Garden" are the most caustic songs on the album, with a gloom and horror around them that eats away at you. I used to not be able to stand "The Hanging Garden," just because of the horrible images the lines "Cover my face as the animals die!" invoked. What can I say, I'm an animal lover. The same goes for "A Hundred Years" and the line "A sound like a tiger thrashing in the water." Go figure. They grew on me eventually. But a warning: These songs are both very, very disturbing. "A Hundred Years" especially is not a song to listen to if you're feeling suicidal. I especially like the drums on "The Hanging Garden." Who knew? Evidently Lol Tolhurst does have his moments, however few and far between.

"Cold" is another masterpiece, with chilling synth tones and vocals that have been mechanized enough to sound harsh and frozen. The title is not a coincidence. There are a few more scarred images here. "Your back was turned/Curled like an embreyo" and "I was cold as I mouthed the words/And crawled across the mirror."

I'm not a huge, huge fan of "A Short Term Effect." I think this has more to do with me being sick of hearing the words "cold," "mirror," and "die" so many times than a reflection on the actual song. If it had been on any other album I probably would have loved it, but here it just seems repetitive and boring. "The Figurehead" doesn't do much for me musically, either. I do love the words to it, it's just that the music it's set to doesn't appeal to me. It's slow, but not in the way that the other songs are slow. It's gloomy, but not innovative. Again, this is probably just from being set against this album. I would love it if it were paired with songs that didn't make it sound like a cheap imitation. The imagery and flow to the poetry of "The Figurehead" is twisted and dark and amazing. It's just the music I don't like, is all.

And finally, "Pornography." The title track is definitely a love-it-or-hate-it compilation, consisting of what sounds like a German talk show being played in reverse and more disturbing lyrics. The drum beat is excellent, threatening to blow us away but never quite doing so--reminds me of the craving of lust. Bloodlust, in this case. "A desire for flesh/And real blood/And I'll watch you drown in the shower/Pushing my life through your open eyes."

"Pornography" is one of the most stark, terrifying trips into the depths of the human soul that you can find anywhere, in music, art, literature, etc. So in conclusion, buy the damn CD and let it change the way you perceive everything in your world. Wisdom leaks from the edges of this work like blood, and the gloom is waiting for you.