Hello Darkness My Old Friend

The Cure are porn again on their first album for 16 years.

I recall a younger me lying on the couch of my North Fitzroy share house listening to The Cure’s Pornography for the first time. Those swirling, menacing opening chords set the tone before Robert Smith stepped to the microphone to deliver the first lines of what is the band’s defining work.

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

I was gripped from the get go. It was 1982 and I was all of 19, an angst ridden adolescent who had pretentiously embraced the existential despair of every teen who has ever read Camus - or listened to the Cure. They’d got me with the punk pop of Boys Don’t Cry on debut and tipped a hat in this direction on their second and third albums, but Pornography was the purest expression of The Cure’s dark side and it set the tone for much of what was to follow.

I still love that record. Misery loves company, but Robert’s miseries are somehow reassuring, familiar and almost comforting. I still put Pornography on regularly and it has stood the test of time.

The Cure Pornography 1982

Smith sings on the closing lines of the album that he must “fight this sickness, find a cure”. Good intentions perhaps and they have had their up moments since, indeed there have been moments of unadulterated joy, but they’re recidivists and it looks like they’re in remission.

Songs of a Lost World is the Cure’s first album in 16 years, but continues on as if it is 1982 all over again. The first track groans beneath a sweep of gothic organ for a full three minutes before Bobby shuffles forward to sing the first lines of the opening track: