Pornography
| The Cure
Pornography
Pornography is the fourth studio album by British gothic rock band the Cure, released on 4 May 1982 by the record label Fiction. Preceded by the non-album single “Charlotte Sometimes” late the previous year, Pornography was the band’s first album with a new producer, Phil Thornalley, and was recorded at RAK Studiosfrom January to April. Pornography represents the planned conclusion of the group’s Gothic genre of music which began with Seventeen Seconds in 1980.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
May 12, 2005. This is one of those records where a band walks into the studio feeling stripped and grim and dedicates itself to creating something exactly as big and frightening, yelling at the producers that they really want that part to sound that ugly; Smith himself says he wanted the album to be "virtually unbearable."
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Albumism
May 4, 2017. Like a nihilistic driver accelerating without care, Pornography teases out the dark, defeatist impulses that lie within. And yet, paradoxically, its conception is a courageous act of self-preservation—a valiant promise to endure.
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Drowned In Sound
February 23, 2018. The band may have been at their lowest ebb during the making of Pornography but this is perfunctory greatness personified.
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AllMusic
Pornography is an often intriguing listen, but it's just a bit too uneven to be considered a classic.
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PopMatters
June 27, 2017. Not only is Pornography a seminal Cure album, but it iconically captures the sinister eloquence of a controversial concept. In so doing, the album gives us some of the best and bleakest music of the '80s.
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Treble Zine
September 6, 2006. Pornography built upon the sound of The Cure’s previous two albums, Seventeen Seconds and Faith, yet made it louder and much more intense, whilst making the dark aspects of their music even moreso.
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Rolling Stone
September 2, 1982. It is all very well to express a lot with a little, but the Cure most frequently uses a little to express nothing, and the effect is numbing in the extreme.
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BBC
2004. Opening with a nauseous looping guitar riff and Smith's wail of 'It doesn't matter if we all die', Pornography is the sound of The Cure's emotional stakes being dramatically -and psychotically - raised.
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Bored and Dangerous
April 1, 2016. Pornography didn’t make me necessarily want to hear more of The Cure immediately. But it did give me more of an understanding of and appreciation for the band.
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Post-Punk.com
May 3, 2015. The record, brimming with bleak nihilism and dark psychedelia, is often lauded as the band’s best work by many fans and critics and is in retroactively considered by Robert Smith to be the first record of a trilogy of albums including 1989’s Disintegration, and 1999’s Bloodflowers.
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Ultimate Classic Rock
December 14, 2018. The Cure at their gloomiest and doomiest. And no wonder: Everyone was fighting and taking drugs, while Robert Smith was fighting back some major bouts of depression.
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Rolling Stone.de
May 20, 2017. In 1982, The Cure released their fourth album, which was a failure at the time and is now celebrated as the milestone of gothic rock.
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Head Heritage
June 27, 2000. Pornography, in every case, is the peak of their ultrbleak period, and it is an incredible lp filled up with boredom, paranoia and drug-induced confusion.
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Everything Gone Green
March 31, 2014. I realise Pornography is the album most likely to feature at the very summit of many Cure fans’ “best ever” lists, I’ve even seen it cited as Smith’s masterpiece, but it still rates well down the list for me; . . . .
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Rocknworld.com
Pornography is an irreplaceable contemporary recording. It waivers relentlessly between melancholic self-analysis and morbid fixity.
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Curiouser & Curiouser
April 12, 2010. "Pornography" captures the sinister eloquence of a controversial concept and in so doing gives us some of the best and bleakest music of the 1980s.
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George Starostin's Reviews
So here's to extreme Eighties dark decadence. And whatever be, I'll just finish this review by uttering a generic phrase about how this stuff is still a million times better than your average "dark" crap occasionally pushed upon the listener by MTV these days.
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Hard Rock
April 21, 2017. More upbeat and psychedelic than the previous two installments of Smith’s downward spiral, the music packs plenty of punch but the songs are short of identity.
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Mark Prindle
This album blows me away, by the way. Sad sad sad, and dense with a cathedrally keyboard-created "wall of sound" that makes every day feel like another Valentine's Day alone! And, even more so than on Faith, these emotions actually feel REAL!
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Radio Not Found
June 24, 2013. It takes time to really appreciate how amazing this release is. Though each song is bleak and depressing, they’re all great. There isn’t a dull moment to be found here.
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The Austin Chronicle
May 27, 2005. 1982's Pornography is harsh, unforgiving, frequently disturbing, and by no means pop, but the music is suddenly gripping and harrowing, finally giving Smith's twisted psyche free rein to seep into the conscience of a generation.
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Rock and Metal In My Blood
December 15, 2018. "Pornography" is a damn record, in the true sense of the term, a work full of shadows with which to dance under the full moon,
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Robert Christgau
"In books/And films/And in life/And in heaven/The sound of slaughter/As your body turns . . ."--no, I can't go on. I mean, why so glum, chum?
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laut.de
May 3, 1982. In " Pornography ", however, the outcome was anything but open-ended: Weltschmerz and -ekel should prevail - unconditionally.
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Gothic.at
September 7, 2009. Not by the way, but essential and outstanding - one of the most important gothic albums, and probably the most important of the band.
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Jason's Jukebox
May 10, 2012. The Cure created a masterpiece in 1982 entitled Pornography which used the 3rd definition as a basis for one of the most nihilistic albums ever created. Not coincidentally, one of my favorite albums of all time.
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El Portal del METAL: Resenas (The METAL Portal)
May 29, 2015. They were always sad guys ... some darker punk-rock architects, but nothing like in this Pornography. Here they reached another level.
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Louder Sound
April 23, 2019. It still sounds oppressively harsh and despairing, but also impressively stark and uncompromising.
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Adriandenning.co.uk
It's difficult to say 'Pornography' is an album to be enjoyed, but then it was difficult to say that about either 'Faith' or 'Seventeen Seconds' either. It's clear however that the particular path Robert Smith was pursuing had reached some kind of ending with 'Pornography'. Well, perhaps not an ending, but at least an ending with a crossroads.
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Midnight Punk
January 21, 2013. Pornography has a different feel to the other two ‘bleak’ albums. The record is far more dense musically and The Cure move into a heavier sound that somehow escapes any rock genre in the traditional sense.
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ArtRock.PL
September 9, 2011. For me, one of the most important records of the eighties.
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