Customer Reviews

Pornography [Deluxe Edition]

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For fifteen years consumers have had to live with muddy-sounding, flat, low-rent mastering of this classic album. Now, finally, we've got something akin to actual hi-fi. The remastering is amazing. I'm listening to it right now on my wife's cheap Panasonic shelf system and can hear at least four new levels of nuance in just about every instrument in the mix. I honestly feel like I'm hearing the album for the first time.

Robert's voice in particular now actually sounds like it's coming through the flames at you, bounding down from his implosive pulpit like a hail of nails. This album has always been billed as the group's most depressing work -- a love letter to self hate and cryptic defeatism. It is. And beautifully so. Much of the current generation of corporate goth rockers (Manson et al) sound positively silly compared to this album.

As for the extras, well, they're a mixed bag. The studio demos often sound like completely different tracks (particularly the Hanging Garden demo which sounds more like something off "Faith.") These are worth the price alone. The live material is certainly inspired but most of it comes from audience recordings. Nonetheless, with live material from this era being so rare, anything is better than nothing.

Overall, I'd call this an automatic purchase for any Cure fan and certainly the preferred format for new fans to discover one of their best albums. Short of the work of groups such as Current 93, absolutely nothing else comes close to depicting the inherent inner-violence of depression. Pornography indeed.

As each album had been getting progressively darker, there seemed little room for the Cure to go after "Faith", but "Pornography" found something new-- Robert Smith (guitar, vocals, keys), Simon Gallup (bass, keys), and Lol Tolhurst (drums, keys) constructed something dark, edgy, and frightening, taking the haunted mood of the last album and adding aggression and noise. The guitars have become more distorted and louder, and the drums have been moving into a somewhat more tribal pattern. The result is something much more in your face than anything the Cure had done.

Nowhere is this more obvious than the opener, probably best summed by the line "waiting for the death blow", "One Hundred Years" is full of edgy guitars and despondant passion. This sort of passionate delivery is a thread throughout the album-- take the powerful invocation of "I will never be clean again" on "The Figurehead" (over a great tribal drum pattern from Tolhurst) or the plodding but effective "Siamese Twins", rescued by a great Smith vocal.

While the album is pretty dark, it does get fairly varied-- "A Strange Day" seems almost optimistic (if you don't listen too closely to what Smith is singing) and the album does cover a number of moods, from rock ("One Hundred Years") to pseudo-ambient ("A Short Term Effect") to a sort of gothic progressive rock ("Cold"). Start to finish, its a fantastic album, and unlike many albums with a somewhat unvaried mood, this one is quite listenable.

As the rest of the Cure remasters, the sound is fantastic, crisp, clean, showing every nuance of the music and allowing its expressiveness to breathe. Again, the liner notes include a candid and honest essay about the creation of the album and the tour that followed, and a disc of bonus material is included. The demos, given the sort of bleak production of the music, are often quite telling on this one, and the live material is nothing short of fantastic, although the sound quality in both cases is not letter perfect for obvious reasons, but given the strength of the material, it carries through well enough.

If you're new to the Cure but used to kind of odd music, this might be a good place to start, its certainly one of their peaks, and thsi reissue only makes it sound better.

I went into the record store I work at on Monday, my day off, just to buy the three reissues before anybody else had a chance. The first one I put in was 'Pornography', the one I was most excited about.

As for the remastered sound, this could be the least altered of the three reissues. The most noticeable improvement is certainly the element of "distance" given to Robert Smith's voice. His vocals have a permanent echo to them that float above the mix much clearer than in the past issuing of the album. The mix is considerably louder and given more bottom end. If anything is proven by modern remastering, however, it's that the actual production of the album is extremely dense and murky. 'One Hundred Years' with its "Phil Spector in Hell" sound doesn't reveal quite as much as a more subtle, spare song like 'The Figurehead' (the first guitar arpeggio, for instance, and even Smith's vocals).

The bonus material and packaging is first rate. Most of the rarities disc contains live material and rejected instrumental demos. The most fascinating part of this reissue is definitely the demo of 'The Hanging Garden'. It started out as a slower number with a more basic drum beat, and lyrics that would become parts of other 'Pornography' songs. It almost feels as if this were a creative start for the whole project. The 'Airlock' soundtrack shows Robert Smith's mental state probably more than anything on this whole reissue (you'll have to listen to it to know what I mean).

In my opinion, the sound on this reissue isn't quite as improved and clear as on the other two reissues, but it is a definite and genuine improvement over the original cd issue. The second disc and booklet makes this essential for major Cure fans.

"Pornography" may be the definitive Cure album. The group has had some serious missteps, several lineup changes, all the highs and lows that go with a thirty year history, but this one is on the mark from begining to end. Many fans cite the 1989 masterpiece "Disintergration" as the groups finest hour, and I'll stay out of the debate (personally, I am partial to "Faith", despite its obvious shortcomings)--but if there is such a thing as a Cure aesthetic, it finds some of its best exprression here. The sound is stipped down, ominous interlocking drums and bass. The lyrics are mostly superb. From the opening of the disc, "It doesn't matter if we all die" (can there be a better summation to the group's gestalt?), to the self-referential final lines of the work, there is real passion here. It flirts with solipsism--a characteristic that mars much of their other work--but never quite crosses over. Whether you're 14 and "screaming at the moon", or 40 and covering your face as the animals die, there is poetry enough here.

As a long time fan of The Cure 20plus years, I was thrilled to hear about the remasters and this was the one I was most excited about, as the album/cd always sounded muffled and murky. Pornography is such a beautiful album in the sense of poetry, lyrics, mood, and atmosphere. After all these years, I still find myself singing along full of delicious misery and covered in cold chills. So thats how I felt about the album coming into this whole remaster game. Well, the remaster and bonus dics are simply put, wonderful. The album never sounded better, especially when played very loud. The bonus disc has 6 great demo versions that sound better than the demos on any of the other remasters. 3 demos of which are not even on the original album. The Hanging Garden is the real treat here, sounding more like a track off of Faith with lyrics that later became all different parts of the Pornography album. The live tracks are great and capture the moments as only a bootleg can. Two other stand out tracks are of course the insane Airlock Soundtrack, which is by far the craziest and spookiest thing I have ever heard The Cure do. It sounds like "the score to a totally disturbing French horror film set in an insane asylym during a raging storm" type of track. It gives one also the sense of Robert's state of mind at the time. Finally, a track called Temptation, which later became Let's go to bed. So imagine if Let's Go To Bed was on Pornography instead with mostly different lyrics. What a traet for me and my friends to discuss and listen to forever. If you are a true fan of The Cure and Robert, this is simply priceless.

The question for fans will obviously be, "Do I need to buy this remaster or am I all set with the original?" Unfortunately folks you need to reach for the wallet again. I think that enough has been done here to warrant spending your hard-earned cash... who are we kidding - you don't work that hard. Not only have a load of demos and rarities been included, but the remastering has brought out a new level of depth and nuance that you just couldn't hear before.

Where the original is muddy, the remaster is crystal clear. Of course, one could argue that the muddy production actually helped to create the dense wall of sound that made this album so intimidating in the first place. Well that is true to be sure. However, that's part of the amazing thing about this. In all of the clean-up effort, the opaqueness of the original is never lost. You will still feeel as though you are lost in a forest of despair; the difference now is that you'll be able to tell the difference between the fog and the cobwebs instead of sensing just one hazy mass of white gauze. You can hear how each synth bar decays with time. You can discern the subtle variances between several different electronic string instrument tones that may coexist at the same moment. The effects on the guitar and bass jump off the page now.

Basically either of the upgrades (the new tracks and the enhanced sound) makes the purchase worthwhile. Old fans have no choice. And new fans might as well buy this version as opposed to the original anyway. To heck with freedom of choice - do what you are destined to do and buy, or rebuy as the case may be.

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I've tacked on my review of the original here at the end to decribe the music for new fans...

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, despairing 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 vocals 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 something 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 greatest 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 have been a cure fan since the 8th grade. They are and have been my favorite band. Having digested all of thier albums continously (this band got me through high school, so I support this band very strongly) I can honestly say that Pornography is thier best body of work. Nothing else they did comes close to this...its incredible. Its like being thrown into your worst nightmare and enjoying it. Yeah, Im confused too but there it is. The song "100 Hundred years"(the song itself makes the album worth buying) starts the trip without mercy with Robert Smith uttering the harsh "It doesnt matter if we all die." You know that you are in for a heck of a ride so your brain automatically buckles its seatbelt and before you know it, your lost in this beautiful and disturbing world. If the cure were labled Goth after this record than they only have themselves to blame for churning out this masterpiece. But you cant help but listen to this and know that all of the dracula wannabes have this record in thier collection.

If your new to the cure and you are interested in trying to understand what all the fuss is about than this is the best starting point for your unforgettable journey into this bands mythic and brilliant music.

Most people will say that Disintegration or Head on the door is the launching pad But I disagree. Pornography is the best way to get it. Its the Cure at its most vulnerable and its most potent. THe song "100 years" will be all the proof you need and before you know it your hooked.

Than you will find yourself patting yourself on the back for listening to this wonderful band...I still do....17 years and counting.

This album is quite possibly the darkest album I've heard in a long time. Robert was spinning into drug-induced depression at the time, and the results were Pornography. Every song from 100 Years to the title track are pumped full of deep, black, depression. Even the first line of the cd, 'It doesn't matter if we all die', lets the listener know what he/she is in for. The guitar puts the icing on the cake. It laces all of the music with dysfunctional, screaching, spirals that one might hear on the path to insanity. The cold drum machine gives the darkness it's heartbeat, and Robert gives the music the 'losing hope' vocals. When Robert sings, you ALWAYS hear every bit of emotion that he intended to be put in the song. Buy this album along with Disintigration. You won't be disappointed. Also, check out Faith and Seventeen Seconds for more Cure darkness.

A few years back I bought the original CD release of Pornography, to see if there was anything beyond the tracks from Staring at the Sea I liked. I played through it and forgot about, nothing special. So when I bought this re-release (along with the simultaneous rereleases of Faith and Seventeen Seconds) I wasn't expecting much.

Boy was I wrong! This album comes alive with the remasters, just listen to the drums. I think of this as the "angry drum album", because that's what it is. For those who didn't like Pornography, listen to this album at night while driving in your car. Focus on the drums, let them hammer into you. Then you'll get it.

One Hundred Years sounds about like it does on the Paris concert album, and the drums beat into you as they always do on The Hanging Garden. A real treat is The Figurehead, most familiar to owners of the Paris live album. The drums are just stunning on this one, as Robert's vocals wail on. A Strange Day has an eerie beat reminiscent of early eighties pop in general, but there is that devastating drum again. Finally I love Cold, with a dread organ playing backdrop to the menacing drumbeat.

The bonus CD has some interesting oddities and some really excellent tracks. It opens with two "mood" demos, Break and Demise, which give you a feel for what went into this album. A real standout is the studio demo of The Figurehead. The arrangements are the same, but spare and without frills. It's good enough to be on my playlist along with the other versions of the song.

The early version of The Hanging Garden is a great illustration of just what went into Robert Smith's songs. Somewhere along this bland song he said toss it, let rip out something completely different with a hammering drum beat. The live version of Cold is a treat, and sounds great. The live Short Term Effect is so clean I mistook it for a studio jam.

The album sleeve art and font are distorted and hard to make out, as was obviously the intent. It sums up the mood of the album certainly. (Note that the fonts are different from the two previous album reissues, so this is all deliberate.) If you heard Pornography before and dismissed it, get this remastered edition and hear it as it was meant to be heard, with the drums hammering into your brain!

Tis truly a mystery how a thoroughly confused and arguably disturbed young man with greatly tousled hair and poorly applied make-up smearing his face could manage to plumb the depths of universal consciousness to create such majesty as this profound album. The lyrics are stirring and emotionally arousing. The song structures seem to mirror the journey of the soul through the corridors of Dante's halls, pulling the listener deeper and deeper into oblivion...and then strangely back up through joy and bliss.

Though I was certainly old enough to enjoy this work when it was first released, it has taken me about twenty years to truly understand its profundity and enduring impact. Having caught the live show "Trilogy" on DVD and having seen The Cure perform live several times through the years, I was amazed at how well these songs have stood up and how beautifully they are now being played by current members of The Cure. This double disc set - which ingeniously includes lots of worthwhile rarities - is the perfect trip down nostalgia lane while opening up your nerve endings to sounds that are ultimately timeless, fresh and oh so powerful.

Robert Smith is our Roger Waters; and coincidentally this work belongs up there on par with Dark Side of The Moon and the other seminal titles that make up the best rock albums of all time.