CURE, (The) Pornography 1992 CD

There's a reason people still talk about Pornography in hushed, slightly haunted tones. Released in 1982 at the absolute nadir of Robert Smith's mental state, it's less an album and more a controlled collapse, four people in a studio trying to outlast each other through the noise. The Cure wouldn't sound like this again, and nothing else has really sounded like it since.

This is the record that drew the line between post-punk and gothic rock and dared anyone to cross it. Smith has said he genuinely wasn't sure the band would survive making it, and you can hear that. It's claustrophobic, druggy, and completely committed to its own darkness in a way that most dark music only pretends to be. A One Hundred Years, Siamese Twins, The Figurehead, these aren't songs you put on for a dinner party. They're songs you put on when you need the room to know something is wrong.

This 1992 pressing on CD. Genre: post-punk, gothic rock. Origin: UK.

Fans of: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, early Sisters of Mercy.