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Forget about The Cure's later wallowings in gothic gloom and drawn-out suffering. After dark, Fiction Records' boss Chris Parry smuggled his budget-lite band into the studio where The Jam were recording All Mod Cons by day. Smith and the boys used that band's equipment to make midnight hay. From declamatory opener "10.15 Saturday Night", through the power-pop of "Grinding Halt" and the 999-sounding "Foxy Lady" to the lyrically abstract "Fire In Cairo" and psychedelia-tinged title track, TIB maintains a Japanese-water-torture insistence.
Recorded practically live over three nights with few over-dubs, the album is stark, angry and strafed with Smith's urgent guitar. Punk's predecessors and contemporary nightmares made it into the mix - "Object" evokes Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie; "Subway" could be sister to The Jam's "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight". Parry and engineer-cum-producer Mike Hedges gave the collection an icy veneer that upset Smith in 1979, but now feels starkly reflective of its moment.
Disc 2 of this deluxe edition contains twenty previously unreleased Cure rarities from 1977-1979. Home and studio demos track the development of many TIB tracks and of others like "Boys Don't Cry"; out-takes and live versions further mark the band's evolving sound. Smart cover notes reveal the album's genesis and Smith's own thoughts. Exciting, mascara-free and surprisingly upbeat, Three Imaginary Boys captures a key British talent let off the leash for the first time. It also helps recolour a band best known for inky melancholy. Available only in black? On this evidence, The Cure's music was much more than that. --Simon Morgan
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Customer Reviews
The bonus discs highlights are the non album classics, Boys Don't Cry and Jumping Someone Else's Train. Here are also very rough demos of some of the album tracks. These are quite interesting insights into the composition of the finished songs. A glaring omission however is the excellent 'Killing an Arab' single.
My brother bought this record in 1979 after seeing the band at the Marquee, and after our initial fascination with the cover and anonymous songs fell in love with it. It was the first album of the post-punk era to be unashamedly catchy and yet safely uncommercial, a very difficult balance to strike.
The atmopshere is incredibly gloomy and yet in a very believeable way, not as some art-student pose. The gloom is in the mood more than the lyrics. And best of all, the band display a fine sense of humour that makes this album their most diverse collection of songs.
10.15 is a classic piece of introspection, incredibly assured: a character and mood is established within about 10 seconds thanks to the precision yet not virtuoso playing and the like most of the record it sounds deceptively effortless.
One of the best tracks for me is Another Day, one of the bleakest but most distrinctive moments. And Subway Song is an instant classic and will always remain a great party trick piece.
Fire in Cairo and Grinding Halt are bright yet dark snappy tracks, but the two stand out tracks on the second half of the record are the title track and the extraordinary So What? Over a slick and catchy tune Smith drunkenly reads out the words on the back of a bag of sugar, occasionally wandering into something else, perhaps the original lyrics? It's a brilliant, self-deprecating moment that could have started a whole trend! And it's oddly infectious after a few listens, as well as being very funny.
And the title track is absolutely beautiful, and heartbreaking.
The album's real trick though is the occasional rough edge, the sounds of tuning up and larking-about, which heighten the tightness of the actual picees and never mar the moods of the songs, but instead give the record a feel of sitting in on an exciting session, the magic of which is all in the moment.
And the cover of Foxy Lady is fun too, despite what many people think!
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