 |
| FIX 4 |
release date: Apr. 22, 1980
format: vinyl (FIX 004) / 2cd (2005 remaster)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,88]
producer: Robert Smith, Mike Hedges
label: Fiction Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: A) 2. "Play for Today" (4 / 5) - 3. "Secrets" - - B) 2. "A Forest" (5 / 5) - 5. "Seventeen Seconds"
2nd studio album by The Cure and the follow-up to Three Imaginary Boys (May 1979). Before recording this Michael Dempsey left the band and two new members were included. Simon Gallup replaced Dempsey on bass and Matthieu Hartley stepped in to play keyboard. The album introduces what became a new style of post-punk labelled gothic rock. This was the second album I listened to with The Cure. I really loved "Play for Today" and "A Forest", but I may not have heard it until early '81. I had only just turned 15 and "overnight" went from listening to The Police, Thin Lizzy, Kiss, Blondie, and all my older brothers' favourites like Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, and Dire Straits to discover punk rock and post-punk. It was like an awakening. I had so much to catch up with and tried to digest everything I could get hold of by The Clash, The Jam, Stiff Little Fingers, The Stranglers, The Damned, Undertones, XTC, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Dead Kennedys, Elvis Costello, Sods...
I've always found this more than ordinarily interesting but not entirely up there among the absolute best. The album is enlisted in "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
[ allmusic.com 3 / 5, The Guardian, Rolling Stone 4 / 5 stars ]
