The Cure's Pornography
I've been relistening to some old CDs lately, and this time it was The Cure's Pornography. If you ever had to give a person one album to try to get the idea of goth across--well, that would suck because it would be impossible to get the full breadth through a single album, but still--Pornography would be a good one, especially if you want to bring across the idea that "You might not be ready for this trip." (Some other albums that leap to mind for a "single album" challenge would be The Sisters of Mercy's Floodland and Switchblade Symphony's The Three Calamities. My decision making is based on the idea of great albums that sound goth but also show the artist following his/her own muse instead of a goth blueprint or making a carbon copy of another band.)
There are other Cure albums I really enjoy--like The Head on the Door, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, and Disintegration--but I think Pornography still sounds startling today, even over 25 years after it was recorded. Besides, it has "The Hanging Garden" in it.
The Cure has a mainstream reputation as just mope rockers that's not deserved, especially since they've also made a lot of insanely happy sounding songs with disquieting lyrics. Pornography is horror: it sounds like a hundred bad acid trips written down and set to music. For all I know, that might have been the actual creative process on it.
The Cure would end up recycling some of the sounds and lyrical images many times over their career, but it somehow still sounds fresh here, maybe because there's a striking occasional use of discordance for emphasis, especially on "Pornography." The drums are insistent and sound kind of like they were recorded in an empty room. "One Hundred Years" starts the album off very strong, although I felt the song would be more powerful if it had been shorter. And then there are the album's lyrics, of which I'll give you a taste...
It doesn't matter if we all die
Ambition in the back of a black car
In a high building there is so much to do
Going home time
A story on the radio
Something small falls out of your mouth
And we laugh
A prayer for something better
A prayer
For something better
Please love me!
Meet my mother...
-- "One Hundred Years"
Scream
As she tries to push him over
Helpless and sick
With teeth of madness
Jump jump dance and sing
Sideways across the desert
A charcoal face
Bites my hand
Time is sweet
Derange and disengage everything...
-- "A Short Term Effect"
Sharp and open
Leave me alone
And sleeping less every night
As the days become heavier and weighted
Waiting
In the cold light
A noise
A scream tears my clothes as the figurines tighten
With spiders inside them
And dust on the lips of a vision of hell
I laughed in the mirror for the first time in a year...
-- "The Figurehead"
One more day like today and I'll kill you
A desire for flesh
And real blood
I'll watch you drown in the shower
Pushing my life through your open eyes...
-- "Pornography"
I wrote some really dark X-Files fanfic with this in the background. And also used "A Short Term Effect" to help my rhythm when I needed to write a poem with rhyme and meter, which I suck at because I don't stress all the same syllables my teachers did, for a creative writing class in college. I got a B for it, so it worked. *g*
I just freshly put this album into iTunes, though I had to leave the songs unchecked because they don't fit on my iMini. Someday....
There are other Cure albums I really enjoy--like The Head on the Door, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, and Disintegration--but I think Pornography still sounds startling today, even over 25 years after it was recorded. Besides, it has "The Hanging Garden" in it.
The Cure has a mainstream reputation as just mope rockers that's not deserved, especially since they've also made a lot of insanely happy sounding songs with disquieting lyrics. Pornography is horror: it sounds like a hundred bad acid trips written down and set to music. For all I know, that might have been the actual creative process on it.
The Cure would end up recycling some of the sounds and lyrical images many times over their career, but it somehow still sounds fresh here, maybe because there's a striking occasional use of discordance for emphasis, especially on "Pornography." The drums are insistent and sound kind of like they were recorded in an empty room. "One Hundred Years" starts the album off very strong, although I felt the song would be more powerful if it had been shorter. And then there are the album's lyrics, of which I'll give you a taste...
It doesn't matter if we all die
Ambition in the back of a black car
In a high building there is so much to do
Going home time
A story on the radio
Something small falls out of your mouth
And we laugh
A prayer for something better
A prayer
For something better
Please love me!
Meet my mother...
-- "One Hundred Years"
Scream
As she tries to push him over
Helpless and sick
With teeth of madness
Jump jump dance and sing
Sideways across the desert
A charcoal face
Bites my hand
Time is sweet
Derange and disengage everything...
-- "A Short Term Effect"
Sharp and open
Leave me alone
And sleeping less every night
As the days become heavier and weighted
Waiting
In the cold light
A noise
A scream tears my clothes as the figurines tighten
With spiders inside them
And dust on the lips of a vision of hell
I laughed in the mirror for the first time in a year...
-- "The Figurehead"
One more day like today and I'll kill you
A desire for flesh
And real blood
I'll watch you drown in the shower
Pushing my life through your open eyes...
-- "Pornography"
I wrote some really dark X-Files fanfic with this in the background. And also used "A Short Term Effect" to help my rhythm when I needed to write a poem with rhyme and meter, which I suck at because I don't stress all the same syllables my teachers did, for a creative writing class in college. I got a B for it, so it worked. *g*
I just freshly put this album into iTunes, though I had to leave the songs unchecked because they don't fit on my iMini. Someday....