BEST OF 1981:The Cure "Faith" (1981)

FIX 6

Faith
release date: Apr. 14, 1981
format: vinyl (FIX 6) / digital
[album rate: 5 / 5] [4,82]
producer: The Cure, Mike Hedges
label: Fiction Records - nationality: England, UK

Tracklist: 1. "The Holy Hour" (4,5 / 5) - 2. "Primary" (5 / 5) - 3. "Other Voices" (5 / 5) - 4. "All Cats Are Grey" (4 / 5) - 5. "The Funeral Party" (4 / 5) - 6. "Doubt" (4 / 5) - 7. "The Drowning Man" (5 / 5) - 8. "Faith" (4,5 / 5)

3rd studio album by The Cure following Seventeen Seconds (1980). After that album Matthieu Hartley left the band and they were back to a trio. Robert Smith also did keyboards on this album, and drummer Laurence Tolhurst also contributed with drum programming, although, he would eventually handle keyboards for the band.

One word: M a s t e r p i e c e . I hold this album very dear. I suppose I've heard it sooo many times on the turntable that the pick-up must've digged out some hidden... expressiveness... and unfortunately, but also inevitably, scratched it just a bit too much. I know, it's dark. It's sinister, it's cold, and it's depressive. Or actually not, really. When I was 16, and all school mates and everyone else at the time listened to old pop / rock, disco, funk, glam pop like Queen, ABBA, Jean Michel Jarre [going pop], ELO, Genesis, Boney M, Kim Wilde, Tina Turner etc. etc., I listened to punk rock, new wave, post-punk and gothic rock like this. I remember sitting in my room late in the evening on many cold winter days all by myself. I switched off all light, and had my best chair facing the dark window, only displaying the occasional lights of cars driving by and reflecting raindrops running slowly down. I sat there in my chair with my B&O headphones on with the volume turned to maximum. I would then sit there listening to this album over and over again while experiencing how good the songs made me feel. The music is soothing with its coldness, hopelessness, and by expressing such depression that it it had the exact opposite effect on me - it lifted me out of my own loneliness, my despair, making everything worthwhile in my melancholic teenage "weltschmerz". The Cure is one of many artists I've listened to long before they became international big stars. I recall the day I became hooked on The Cure. My best friend and I shared the same musical taste, and we listened to a program on the radio presenting new bands and music. I already knew The Jam, The Clash, Elvis Costello, and many others - but mainly punk rock or new wave bands, and this was something really new. Gothic rock had evolved from post-punk featuring Joy Division as the stylistic icon with bits from glam rock and progressive rock. On the radio that day, they had played tracks from Seventeen Seconds (1980), as well as Boy's Don't Cry (1980), and I was really hooked - I had never heard anything like this before. Of course we recorded the tracks on tape, so we could share and hear it again. One of the following days I went to my local record dealer with the intention to buy Seventeen Seconds but he had only just received the brand new album by The Cure, so I purchased Faith without really listening to it. The immediate impression as I returned home was bland, as this was something else than what I had heard and liked so much but after the first full listen, I was caught in the fascinating musical universe of Faith. I stayed a big fan of The Cure's music, and got tired of Robert Smith and Laurence Tolhurst with band [The Cure] in the mid-80s and especially with the release Disintegration - an album which most critics and an ever-growing audience received as a good progression. Later on they got even bigger but I didn't like it anymore. Nowadays, I hardly ever listen to The Cure although, I do understand why I liked it so much. Today, it may appear too linked up with the 1980s post-punk and gothic rock era but nevertheless, I find it a true modern classic, way more important than Michael Jackson's Thriller, and anyhow, it's one of a handful of albums from my teens that runs in my veins.
"Every home should have one".
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5, Sounds Magazine 4,5 / 5 stars ]

1981 Favourite releases: - 1. The Cure Faith - 2. The Sound From the Lions Mouth - 3. The Durutti Column LC

[ collectors' item ]