The Cure: Pornography - 1982

This was, apparently, The Cure's drug abuse album, when the inter-band rows saw them collapsing into near collapse. It is suitably sombre (what a surprise!) but is, would you believe, less bleak than its dismal predecessor. Its eight songs are longer and slightly more positive in their sound, albeit which is a very well-trodden post punk one. 

There is nothing much that can be said, individually, about each track. They all have that typical late seventies-early seventies metronomic, slightly muffled drum sound and that atonal, miserable-sounding vocal. Probably the best example of this is the opener, One Hundred Years. The album comes over as a bit of a period piece now, an example of its time and place. The drum-driven The Hanging Garden is probably the best track on offer, along with the atmospheric The Figurehead. 

Overall, I think I prefer this album to Faith. Could they carry on releasing more and more albums in this vein. No is the answer to that and, to their credit, the next one saw signs of a willingness to diversify. 

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