A Year of Blind Spots: Pornography

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die:

Robert Smith formed the Easy Cure while at secondary school in 1976, shortening the band's name to the Cure soon after. Their first single came out in 1978 on Fiction Records. After a straggling first album, the Cure went on to make some of the best albums of the early 1980s. Pornography is probably the best and darkest of all the early Cure records, a dazzling insight into Robert Smith's extraordinary mind.

Based on huge, blasting, repetitive drum and bass patterns, the album's development is organic, a monumental opus of gloom squeezed into 43 minutes. Despite the gloom, there is great musicality on offer. Simon Gallup's tuned-down bass coupled with Tolhurst's monotonous drumming and Smith's deadpan voice create the perfect soundtrack for an aspiring goth, while Smith's lyrics descend into a dark abyss on "Siamese Twins," "The Figurehead," and the title track. The opening "One Hundred Years" has one of the album's strongest riffs, and remains a live favorite. "The Hanging Garden," a relatively playful number, was the album's only hit (a UK no. 34). The closing track is an experimental sound collage that laments the mess that has been made of the planet. (Co-producer Phil Thornalley would later become the Cure's bassist, and also wrote and produced Natalie Imbruglia's smash hit "Torn.")

The tour following the album's release saw Smith and Gallup coming to blows at the end of the last gig in Strasbourg, France. Eventually, after a short hiatus, the Cure successfully continued as a duo on a more pop-based path, and Smith took to moonlight with Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Joe:

Without knowing anything about the Cure's discography beyond what we've already covered here (Disintegration, which happens seven years later and is most likely part of that "more pop-based path" mentioned in the preceding blurb), I would say that Pornography sounds like one of the artful pieces of work that is intentionally abrasive as a self-defense mechanism. Note that there are no hits on here, and what even could be? The music itself is harsh and amelodic pretty much throughout. And even the name is meant to repel—not that pornography itself is necessarily repellent (it is, in my opinion, very much not), but I'm saying more imagine putting an album called Pornography on a shelf and asking people to buy it in public in the early '80s. It sounds like the type of album that you pour your heart and soul into, and then realize that maybe that's gonna turn people away, so you lean into that, daring them to like it anyway, and having a ready-made excuse when most people don't.

For the record, I like this album, but at this juncture I probably prefer the poppier stuff from this band. That's what I'm saying about the "without knowing anything about their discography" thing. Now that I know the relative chronology, it's pretty easy to see that Pornography is harsher simply because it came earlier, not because it was a blip in Smith's artistic history or whatever. Some bands get weirder, and some get less weird, that's just how it goes. I hold the same amount of respect for bands that push their sound toward mass appeal as the bands that purposefully pull their sound away from mass appeal, so as long as both directions are worked artistically and without commercial interests in mind.

From what I've seen, Robert Smith was and remains one of the real ones, a legacy artist who is still making waves artistically (the Cure's 2024 comeback album was one of the best-reviewed albums of that year) and personally (fighting evil ticket-pricing systems). I'm not just saying this because he's featured on one of the best songs on Olivia Rodrigo's new album (but I'm not not saying it because of this... it's a great fucking song). If Pornography was meant to repel, then it failed, because I am drawn to the mysterious brooding darkness of this thing. I get why something like "The Figurehead" would never be on the radio, and I can even say that on most days I prefer something like pop chart bait "Friday I'm in Love" (1992), but I deeply appreciate a song like "The Figurehead." There is zero broad appeal but its depth goes on forever.

It's really fascinating to find out that all the mildly corny songs that I'm familiar with from the Cure happen in a completely different era, and that this first era, nearer their beginning, is all harsh and challenging and occasionally tough to grab ahold of. I like being challenged. If this was another album full of faithful '80s pop hits, then I would've enjoyed but ultimately scoffed. Here, it's harder to listen, but easier to appreciate. And it's these types of albums that have staying power.