Pornography

Spin - "Where all aspiring new-wavers go to study enunciation." Q - Included in Q Magazine's Best Gothic Albums Of All Time - "...something uniquely, irresistibly nasty....It made sense of the abject horror of those mock A levels." Spin - "[A] druggy steel-cage match between death-disco drums and tarnished hooks that's somehow still fun to shimmy to." Uncut - 5 stars out of 5 - "Smith's unearthed demos and live tracks from this period do not prepare you for the pure shock and awe of PORNOGRAPHY. Even today, nothing can." NME - Ranked #24 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums" - "...Fueled by LSD, [it] is a dense, unrelenting wall of ugly noise..." Rolling Stone - 4 stars out of 5 - "[T]his goth milestone brings the heaviness of metal without its cliches. Smith wails, guitars blare and drums pound in an echo-laden maelstrom of decay and loathing..." Q (12/99, p.171) - Included in Q Magazine's Best Gothic Albums Of All Time - "...something uniquely, irresistibly nasty....It made sense of the abject horror of those mock A levels." NME (8/12/00, p.29) - Ranked #24 in The NME "Top 30 Heartbreak Albums" - "...Fueled by LSD, [it] is a dense, unrelenting wall of ugly noise..."

For a band that's known worldwide as the premier purveyors of goth-rock gloom and doom (though hardly incapable of sparkling pop gems), it's no small thing to identify a particular album as their darkest, most disturbing sonic statement. Nevertheless, PORNOGRAPHY surely fills the bill. Reportedly created during a time of great psychological upheaval for group leader Robert Smith, it's a gloriously no-holds-barred existential angst-fest, from the very first line, "It doesn't matter if we all die". Not since Leonard Cohen's SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE had despair been so lovingly ladled into album form, but it's not just Smith's Prozac prescription that was upped during these sessions. His lyrical approach expanded as well, incorporating more stream-of-consciousness poetic imagery. And the rhythmic attack of bassist Simon Gallup and drummer Lol Tolhurst reached new heights of propulsiveness and viscerality as well, whether pounding out a churning syncopation on "The Hanging Garden" or delivering the heavy-hammered nail in the coffin on "A Short Term Effect".|

Later hailed as one of the key goth rock albums of the '80s and considered by many hardcore Cure fans to be the band's best album, Pornography was largely dismissed upon its 1982 release, witheringly reviewed as a leaden slab of whining and moping. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between: Pornography is much better than most mainstream critics of the time thought, but in retrospect, it's not the masterpiece some fans have claimed it to be. The overall sound is thick and murky, but too muddy to be effectively atmospheric in the way that the more dynamic Disintegration managed a few years later. For every powerful track like the doomy opener "One Hundred Years" and the clattering, desolate single "The Hanging Garden," there's a sound-over-substance piece of filler like "The Figurehead," which sounds suitably bleak but doesn't have the musical or emotional heft this sort of music requires. Pornography is an often intriguing listen, but it's just a bit too uneven to be considered a classic. ~ Stewart Mason