5. The CurePornography

Oh, man! Right. Well my first experience of this album was that my friend Michael MacNamara had the double 7” single with ‘One Hundred Years’ and ‘The Hanging Garden’ and ‘A Forest’ on it, and I was always jealous.

I love everything by The Cure, really, especially up to Wish, but the trilogy of Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography… it’s the Smith / Tolhurst / Gallup lineup taken to its extreme. Seventeen Seconds, quite abstract; Faith; darker, this, darkest – it’s just incredible. It’s got a different atmosphere, I think, than any other record ever. I’ve not heard a record that sounds anything like it. I read that they did a lot of acid. It sounds like they might’ve had a tough time trippin’.

The funny thing, really, was that straight after this came ‘The Walk’ – they went from just a wall of sound, pretty much, to a kaleidoscopic polka dot psychedelic band. They kind of broke themselves.