The Cure (LANDMARK): The Head on the Door by: Tomas Winter Mon:27-Oct-08 Label: Fiction Year: 1985 WB rating 86 out of 100

The very first time I heard the Cure, I was five years old. It was 1992 and my uncle was desperately trying to put me to sleep. In a last minute attempt before drugging me, he walked to his record player, lifted the needle and placed it down on the deck. The opening drum riff to ‘In Between Days’ echoes throughout the room and my attention is instantly caught. I asked him, “What is this?” He sighed and handed me the record sleeve and I just stared at it, trying to figure it out. The only thing I could make out were the words, The Cure and The Head On The Door.

It was 1985 and not long after the release of The Top, the Cure had released their sixth studio album, The Head On The Door. Robert Smith is now finding his sobriety and his personal demons seem to have been exorcised. This resulted in one of the Cure’s first genuine classics, reforming and shaping the band in a way few foreshadowed. Smith’s dream like lyrics could always drag down into the depths of human dejection, but now he can hold us there, coloring in all the dark places with his schizophrenic, hook-laden and ultimately strengthening sound.

It was the despair and dreariness of Pornography and The Top that had now given way to a much more attractive and accessible dark pop style. This new sound made doom and gloom danceable and popular – not just among Cure fans but fans of dance, pop, rock and world music. Furthermore, it established another bow to the band’s sound; one which has been followed with albums such as Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and Wish, although never has it been as consistent or as impressive as on The Head on the Door.

‘In Between Days,’ the first single off the album and the opening track exhibits tremolo-strumming guitars and keyboard riffs that hook right around on themselves. As an opening track, it perfectly distills the album to follow. Highlighting a band with a new vision, one steadied by experience and the characteristic performance of their frontman. The first lines, “Yesterday I got so old I felt like I could die/Yesterday I got so old it made me want to cry” shows us that Smith’s lyrical fascinations remain, but it’s the melody that shows us the innovation, its pop origins somehow imbuing the lyrics with even more intent.

The Head On The Door marks the return of Simon Gallop on bass after the fight he had had with Smith just after the ‘Dark Trilogy’ (Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography) and the official re-introduction of Porl Thompson on guitars and keyboards – who had made a small contribution to the recording and the live show of The Top. This new line-up combined for an album of catchy, focused pop, one laced with a worldly and experimental bent. Songs such as ‘The Blood’ utilize flamenco guitars and castanets whilst ‘Kyoto Song’ displays Smith’s love for Japanese art – video clips and photo shoots clearly show the other band members now following in the same fashion trend as Smith, uniforming the band into one whole and not just a collection of 80’s misfits.

‘Close To Me’, the band’s second and final single from the album, is one of the band’s most recognizable songs, the catchy, yet repetitive bass line and contagious clap track ensures this. Smith’s vocals come in soft and jagged. He almost whispers his way through the song, leading the listener away into a hesitant darkness with this constant unnerving sense of claustrophobia folding around. These feelings are magnified and visually evident with the video clip showing the band trapped together in a closet on the edge of a cliff.

Why does this album still hold up so well after 20 years? What is it that Cure has been able to achieve here that other people could only dream of? Why do we keep going back to the Cure and thinking to ourselves, “Gee, why can’t music be more like this now?” It is because the Cure can capture certain emotions in us that many other musicians are unable too. The Head On The Door can evoke a myriad of feelings in its listener – happy, sad, joyful, gloomy. It is heartbreaking, yet somehow cheerful. This is why The Head On The Door is an album that has stood the test of time.