REVIEWS

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The Cure
Pornography (Deluxe Edition – Original Recording Remastered)

Rhino Entertainment Company

Posted: Wednesday, March 29, 2006
By: Jon Prusik

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! The Cure’s double-disc reissue of Pornography is full of supplementary material that got even a hardened skeptic like me to let the cashier swipe my credit card and increase my debt just that much more. Still there is no nudity in the booklet, but hey the content of the album is still full of the nakedness of one’s emotions. Before we begin, I must say that one thing that’s cool about composing this piece is that any decent fan of the genre and/or the band has this album already, so I won’t have to retread familiar ground with giving my opinion on one of the landmark Goth rock albums of all time. The Cure was able to make one of those several times over apparently, so we are talking about masters of the craft.

Again with this bonus disc of demos, live tracks, and rarities, there are some demos that are rough to listen to for songs we already know, though this reissue has less than the one for Faith. Some nice studio demos include “Temptation” and the highly different, but very good version of “The Hanging Garden,” which I must say, does it for me more than the album version EVER did. Though there are plenty of studio demos and live tracks on here that are pretty identical to the original studio versions, they are still that good bit of material to make this purchase worth it. I must say that “Airlock: The Soundtrack” was quite the moment to forget in The Cure's hope to make another epic piece of gothic instrumental music in all its non-existent glory. Remember that b-sides and rarities are what they are for a reason. Now that isn’t always true, but if you have to take a safe bet then you should count on that statement holding up.

In the end, I must say that Rhino Records has done another good job with these reissues and they are worth the money. I will confess that I was the apprehensive one as well for about a month or so since Rhino put out these reissues, but I did finally succumb, though I will state that I will probably have the same initial fear when I see future releases of a similar nature by this band or any band for that matter. There’s a very good track history in the industry to make one feel this way.

Oh, and lest we forget, the booklet that comes with this reissue is once again a good companion to this release, so we can get a brief glimpse of what it was like for the band at the time and what they were dressing like at the time. Only when I revisit albums like this do I wish that I wasn’t just barely in grade school at the time.