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Track Listings
| 1. Inbetween Days |
| 2. Inwood |
| 3. Push |
| 4. Innsbruck |
| 5. Stop Dead |
| 6. Lalala |
| 7. Screw |
| 8. Lime Time |
| 9. Kyoto Song |
| 10. A Few Hours After This ... |
| 11. Six Different Ways |
| 12. A Man Inside My Mouth |
| 13. A Night Like This |
| 14. The Exploding Boy |
| 15. Close To Me |
| 16. The Baby Screams |
| 17. The Blood |
| 18. Sinking |
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
This is the Cure album to start with. Robert Smith and company's best and most coherent statement, The Head on the Door is a successful, if schizophrenic, synthesis of the best of 1980s rock, boasting danceable Eurobeat anthems ("In Between Days"), world-music-flavored exotica ("Kyoto Song", the Latin- tinged "The Blood"), and more sullen statements of post-modern angst from the band that gave you such downer epics as Faith and Pornography. More than any other Cure album, Head rewards those who don't subscribe to the darker side of the group's ethos. The use of Spanish guitar and other colourful arrangement touches help to create a rich dynamic. The softer, more introspective cuts (like the claustrophobic "Close to Me", Smith's confessional classic) are also far more effective for them. --Don Harrison
From Amazon.com
This is the Cure album to start with. Robert Smith and company's best and most coherent statement, The Head on the Door is a successful, if schizophrenic, synthesis of the best of '80s rock, boasting danceable Eurobeat anthems ("In Between Days"), world-music-flavored exotica ("Kyoto Song," the Latin-tinged "The Blood"), and more sullen statements of post-modern angst from the band that gave you such downer epics as Faith and Pornography. More than any other Cure album, Head rewards those who don't subscribe to the darker side of the group's ethos. The use of Spanish guitar and other colorful arrangement touches help to create a rich dynamic. The softer, more introspective cuts (like the claustrophobic "Close to Me," Smith's confessional classic) are also far more effective for them. --Don Harrison
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great album given extra depth,
By Dandyboy (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Head On The Door - Deluxe Edition (Audio CD)
For me, this is one of the Cure's best albums. Alongside the cacophany of Pornography and melancholy of Disintegration, I think that this is the one that best highlights the various shades of light and dark that there are in the Smith cannon. Inbetween Days is the one where Robert mastered the classy pop song (he'd perfect it with Just Like Heaven 2 years later), though the fact it's followed by the beautifully instumented Kyoto Song tells you that while he might have learned a few things since Let's Go To Bed's crassy commercialism, he didn't forget how to write something as dreamily hypnotic as Just One Kiss. It's this broad pallett that encapsulates the spirit of the whole album, taking in Spanish guitars (The Blood), twisted funk grooves (Screw), complete desolation (Sinking), adrenaline-rushing positivity (Push) and perhaps the greatest example of Robert Smith's unique somehow-melancholy-yet-somehow-uplifting-at-the-same-time brand of pop (A Night Like This). Although there are many Cure albums more rewarding than this, this is the microcosm of all that made them so special in the 80s.
And to the extra disc... the Inbetween Days demo is divine, just Robert in his flat when the riff came to him and a fascinating insight into the birth of a great popsong. Inwood and Innsbruck are demos that hark to the fact that there were a lot of dark things still going on under the surface, despite the upbeat feeling to most of the album and the relative single b-sides. Indeed, for those who do not own Join The Dots (the b-side retrospective released a few years back) there are also tentative demos of lost classics like Stop Dead, A Few Hours After This, The Exploding Boy and A man Inside My Mouth. There is also a glimpse into the experimentation of the band's sound and how much further it could have been stretched with Lime Green (and the chance to hear Robert do the best Bowie impression ever with the intro!). The live tracks are a nice touch to finish off, especially the live version of Sinking. It's the sound of a band on a threshold, on top form and about to take on the world, and just maybe win...
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
that is good!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Head on the Door (Audio CD)
for a band to start their career by introducing themselves as 3 household appliances may seem odd, to continue afterwards until 1987 to have blurred sleeves, with images that the listener would struggle to make out, may seem perverse and to be honest im not sure if anyone else could do this and continue as well as the cure.......... beyond the blurred sleeves, lies some brilliant music, so open that cd case now take out the cd! Ahh the ever changing sound ofthe cure, over the years theyve been changing, and still continue to, this album , according to what i know, was a big hit, it was released in the year i was born (1985), and i think it is a very impressive album and starts the change of where the cure burst into the mainstream on their feet and never lost control over it. This album crosses hits like close to me, in between days, with more dark and moody songs like the blood, kyoto song and of course the baby screams. Also it includes brooding, beautiful songs like sinking and one of the cures most sincere love songs in my opinion "a night like this". A lot of the songs are fun (six different ways, push, and obviousely the singles), sometimes epic, but the cure still dont forget to put in the more moody songs. Even the pop songs on this album incorporate what the cure are best known for, the certain bitter sweet love and strange , somehow dark lyrics, standing on its own, theres not a bad track, and a lot of stand out tracks, the baby screams is one of my favourites, but as the cure made more albums I have to give this four stars as the rightful claimants to the five stars came later (in my opinion) being the classic albums such as wish, disintegration, and bloodflowers... but thats not to say this isnt also a brilliant album, and is well worth your money. The only other problem with the album is that maybe i prefer my albums a little bit longer, but its still great! So go buy now, now now!
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Start Here,
By
This review is from: The Head On The Door (Audio CD)
Still the best entry point to appreciating The Cure in my view, The Head on the Door covers all Cure bases, from catchy pop (In Between Days, Close to Me) to doom-laden, phased broodscapes (A Night Like This, Sinking). Many of the songs could act as signposts to their other albums - like Sinking? Try Disintegration. The angular pop of Six Different Ways or Kyoto Song? Next stop The Top and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. Close to Me? Japanese Whispers or the Greatest Hits. The perfect poprock of Push and In Between Days? How about Wish?
Not everything is great about the album: A couple of the songs now sound a bit dated and arch (The Blood, Kyoto Song). Others were always a little thin (Baby Screams, Screw). Push and Kyoto Song always sounded better live, minus the now jarringly bright mid-80s drum sounds. And yet the album works well as a whole - Close to Me sounds far more refreshing coming after Baby Screams than after, say, In Between Days on the Greatest Hits. Likewise, Screw giving way to Sinking merely heightens the foreboding and menace of the brilliant album closer. The remastering tidies up the previously murky sound - although some may question whether murkier is better on, say, Sinking. Although I have the deluxe version, for me, the extra CD adds little to what I think remains the best balance Robert Smith ever struck between his different ambitions, moods and styles.
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