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Rating: The masterpiece of the first dark generation. The ecstasy of the depressed and hallucinated Robert Smith, not yet out of the intoxicating spiral that characterized his life at the time and, consequently, his creations.
The year is 1982, punk now lives only as a frayed fashion and the groups born from the first wave of post-punk disperse into the colorful and gypsy tide that is New Wave. There are those who continue with electro-rock experiments, those who focus on noise, those who wink more at the mainstream. And then there is the people of makeup and black eyeshadow.
Commonly defined as dark, gothic rock listeners represent an important branch of new wave acolytes, fashionable followers in the style of Siouxsie Sioux and Smith himself (who, incidentally, collaborated for a long time with Siouxsie's Banshees). In that year, The Cure released "Pornography", a suicide record from the group's first dark journey out of Crawley (to close the triptych composed with Seventeen Seconds and Faith). In 2003, it will be considered the first element of The Cure's Dark Trilogy (along with Disintegration and Bloodflowers). The band's lineup (which throughout its history has seen an impressive number of members, with only singer-guitarist-creator Robert Smith serving as the common element) at the time consisted, besides Smith, of the two most significant members in the group's history: Simon Gallup on bass and Lol Tolhurst on drums. The three crafted all 8 tracks of the album (few, but with an average length of over 5 minutes per song).
The album opens with what is perhaps its best piece, as well as its longest, "One Hundred Years": Tolhurst's neurotic and metronomic drumming launches the track vertically, while Smith's chilling guitar sounds open it horizontally, vibrating in the dense dark sea created by Gallup and the synthesizers. The electronic part is significant in the album: although still distant from the cascading keyboards that Roger O'Donnell will paint for "Disintegration" seven years later, it helps create a sonic vortex of daze, a black abyss from which Smith's very unique voice sometimes emerges as a beam of light, sometimes as the grim chant of a dying siren. The lyrics of the time are among the most depressed ever written, so much so that the album opens with "It doesn't matter if we all die". "A Short Term Effect" is a museum of echoes and reverbs, while with "The Hanging Garden" the skeletal rhythm of Tolhurst fills with toms, as if to highlight the listener's downward race, pursued by guitar reverbs. "Siamese Twins" starts slow and paced and accompanies Smith's laments, emerging, flowing, and fading with the same magical simplicity.
The album crosses the midpoint with the magnificent and darkest "The Figurehead", in a triumph of toms and bass notes dug directly from the Earth's core. The rhythm is the same lamenting march toward implosion (indeed, toward the disintegration of 1989), with Smith's spectral guitar punctuating the path traced by his voice, coming from a cavern of inner despair. The natural continuation is "A Strange Day", with its Vangelis-like synthesizers (it is, after all, the year of Blade Runner) weaving the carpet for an excellent guitar performance by Smith.
"Cold" is more unsettling than cold, with keyboards raising huge walls while simultaneously sketching strange insects scuttling over them with an icy sound, all soaked in the now familiar comatose Sabbath-like advance dictated by Tolhurst. The album closes with the title track, "Pornography" precisely, which starts with a sampled television conversation but seems to come directly from a cold lunar landscape, and slowly the shadow army advances suffocated amidst the dust. The electronic storm here is minimal, made of strange metallic voices, perfect for a trip gone wrong.
"Pornography" ends after a gloomy 43-minute journey into the alienating landscape that is Robert Smith's mind, capable of turning the dry lines of the early works into liquid vats of acid in which to immerse his obsessions, giving birth to a distorted and suffering creature, endowed with the macabre charm that only a work of the Imaginary Boys from Crawley can have.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 One Hundred Years (06:40)
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...
But the fear takes hold
Creeping up the stairs in the dark
Waiting for the death blow
Stroking your hair as the patriots are shot
Fighting for freedom on the television
Sharing the world with slaughtered pigs
Have we got everything?
She struggles to get away...
The pain
And the creeping feeling
A little black haired girl
Waiting for Saturday
The death of her father pushing her
Pushing her white face into the mirror
Aching inside me
And turn me round
Just like the old days
Just like the old days
Caressing an old man
And painting a lifeless face
Just a piece of new meat in a clean room
The soldiers close in under a yellow moon
All shadows and deliverance
Under a black flag
A hundred years of blood
Crimson
The ribbon tightens round my throat
I open my mouth
And my head bursts open
A sound like a tiger thrashing in the water
Thrashing in the water
Over and over
We die one after the other
Over and over
We die one after the other after the other...
It feels like a hundred years
One hundred years...
02 A Short Term Effect (04:22)
movement
no movement
just a falling bird
cold as it hits the bleeding ground
he lived and died...
catch sight
cover me with earth
draped in black
static
white sound
a day without substance
a change of thought
an atmosphere that rots with time
colours that flicker in water
a short term effect
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 day without substance
a change of thought
the atmosphere rots with time
colours that flicker in water
a short term effect
an echo
and a stranger's hand
a short term effect
an echo
and a stranger's hand
a short term effect
03 The Hanging Garden (04:33)
Creatures kissing in the rain
Shapeless in the dark again
In the hanging garden
Please don't speak
In the hanging garden
No one sleeps
Catching haloes on the moon
Gives my hands the shapes of angels
In the heat of the night
The animals scream
In the heat of the night
Walking into a dream...
Fall fall fall fall
Into the walls
Jump jump out of time
Fall fall fall fall
Out of the sky
Cover my face as the animals cry
In the hanging garden
Creatures kissing in the rain
Shapeless in the dark again
In a hanging garden
Change the past
In a hanging garden
Wearing furs and masks...
Fall fall fall fall
Into the walls
Jump jump out of time
Fall fall fall fall
Out of the sky
Cover my face as the animals die
In the hanging garden
In the hanging garden
04 Siamese Twins (05:29)
I chose an eternity of this
Like falling angels
The world disappeared
Laughing into the fire
Is it always like this?
Flesh and blood and the first kiss
The first colours
The first kiss
We writhed under a red light
Voodoo smile
Siamese twins
A girl at the window looks at me for an hour
Then everything falls apart
Broken inside me
It falls apart
The walls and the ceiling move in time
Push a blade into my hands
Slowly up the stairs
And into the room
Is it always like this?
Dancing in my pocket
Worms eat my skin
She glows and grows
With arms outstretched
Her legs around me...
In the morning I cried
Leave me to die
You won't remember my voice
I walked away and grew old
You never talk
We never smile
I scream
You're nothing
I don't need you any more
You're nothing
It fades and spins
Fades and spins...
Sing out loud
We all die
Laughing into the fire...
Is it always like this?
05 The Figurehead (06:15)
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
A hundred other words blind me with your purity
Like an old painted doll in the throes of dance
I think about tomorrow
Please let me sleep
As I slip down the window
Freshly squashed fly
You mean nothing
You mean nothing
I can lose myself in Chinese art and American girls
All the time
Lose me in the dark
Please do it right
Run into the night
I will lose myself tomorrow
Crimson pain
My heart explodes
My memory in a fire
And someone will listen
At least for a short while...
I can never say no to anyone but you
Too many secrets
Too many lies
Writhing with hatred
Too many secrets
Please make it good tonight...
But the same image haunts me
In sequence
In despair of time
I will never be clean again
I touched her eyes
Pressed my stained face
I will never be clean again
Touch her eyes
Press my stained face
I will never be clean again
I will never be clean again
07 Cold (04:26)
Scarred
Your back was turned
Curled like an embryo
Take another face
You will be kissed again
I was cold as I mouthed the words
And crawled across the mirror
I wait
Await the next breath
Your name
Like ice into my heart
A shallow grave
A monument to the ruined age
Ice in my eyes
And eyes like ice don't move
Screaming at the moon
Another past time
Your name
Like ice into my heart
Everything as cold as life
Can no-one save you?
Everything
As cold as silence
And you will never say a word
Your name
Like ice into my heart
08 Pornography (06:27)
a hand in my mouth
a life spills into the flowers
we all look so perfect
as we all fall down
in an electric glare
the old man cracks with age
she found his last picture
in the ashes of the fire
an image of the queen
echoes round the sweating bed
sour yellow sounds inside my head
in books
and films
and in life
and in heaven
the sound of slaughter
as your body turns
but it's too late
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
push my life through your open eyes
i must fight this sickness
find a cure
i must fight this sickness...
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Other reviews
By TenshiSell
"This monument of dark music contains the anxieties and frustrations of a generation that isn’t mine, but they cannot fail to belong to me."
"It starts by saying 'It doesn’t matter if we all die.' It ends with hope. 'I must fight this sickness, find a cure.'"
By vanamente
Robert Smith’s sad and lonely existentialism has probably hit rock bottom in his personal journey through drugs and visions.
Pornography is the Cure’s masterpiece album, but for those unfamiliar with them, it’s perhaps better to start from much further back.
By lucarandi80
The Cure knew very well they were recording their greatest masterpiece; it was felt in the air, it was clear.
They cannot be commented on with simple words because the right nouns and adjectives to do so have not yet been invented.
By Rocky Marciano
Pornography is anguish, fear, and discomfort; the assault of "One Hundred Years" is a metropolitan nightmare.
The apocalypse of the title track continues with a Smith increasingly down but still not wanting to lose the battle.
By Il Tarantiniano
"For me, this is their dark album par excellence along with 'Faith' and 'Seventeen Seconds.'"
"The instruments suffer the most, the singer emits sudden cries of hatred as if he was crying."
