The Cure – Faith [180g Vinyl LP]

The Cure – Faith [180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo
• Catalogue Number: 602547875440
• Barcode: 602547875440
• Genre: Post-Punk / Gothic Rock / New Wave
• Label: Fiction Records / Polydor / Universal Music
• Originally Released: 14 April 1981
• Reissue Released: 2016
• Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Faith is the third studio album by The Cure — released on 14 April 1981 on Fiction Records — and the second instalment of the "Dark Trilogy" that began with Seventeen Seconds (1980) and concluded with Pornography (1982). Produced by Mike Hedges and Robert Smith, and recorded at Morgan Studios in London, it is the album on which the band's aesthetic of mournful, atmospheric post-punk reached its most complete early realisation — minimal, deliberate, and emotionally sustained in a way that very few rock records of the period attempted. The album reached number fourteen on the UK Albums Chart and generated one of The Cure's most enduring early singles: "Primary", which reached number eight in the UK in March 1981, and which Smith has described as the song he is most proud of from this period. NME gave it a five-star review on release; subsequent decades have only reinforced its standing as one of the defining documents of British gothic and post-punk.

The album's eight tracks move with deliberate restraint — Lol Tolhurst's drumming, Simon Gallup's bass and Smith's guitar operating in a sparse, resonant interplay that owes more to the dub-influenced minimalism of Joy Division and Wire than to the guitar-rock of the band's contemporaries. Smith's lyrics across the album address questions of faith, mortality, spiritual doubt and existential emptiness with an unusual directness — the title track is one of rock music's most unresolved meditations on belief, closing the album without catharsis or consolation. "The Holy Hour" opens with quiet, ecclesiastical restraint; "Other Voices" and "All Cats Are Grey" develop the album's palette of deep reverb and slow-motion atmosphere; "The Funeral Party" is the album's most structurally ambitious piece; and "The Drowning Man" — inspired directly by Fuschia's chapter in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels — is among the most explicitly literary pieces Smith has ever written. At the time of recording, all three members of the band were deeply unsettled: Gallup's previous band Mag/Spyz had recently dissolved, Tolhurst was struggling personally, and Smith was navigating the tension between the band's uncompromising direction and the commercial pressures of Fiction's distribution deal with Polydor.

This 2016 Fiction Records / Polydor reissue is pressed on 180 gram black vinyl and presents the album in its original 8-track form in a replica of the original picture sleeve, with a printed inner sleeve and digital download card. The catalogue number and barcode are identical on this pressing. The dead wax carries two inscriptions: "I WENT AWAY ALONE" etched on Side 1 and "WITH NOTHING LEFT BUT FAITH" on Side 2 — a detail that has earned this pressing considerable affection among Cure collectors for its quiet fidelity to the album's emotional content. Made in the EU.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. The Holy Hour
2. Primary
3. Other Voices
4. All Cats Are Grey

Side 2

1. The Funeral Party
2. Doubt
3. The Drowning Man
4. Faith

Credits

• Robert Smith – Vocals, Guitar, Producer
• Simon Gallup – Bass
• Lol Tolhurst – Drums
• Mike Hedges – Producer
• Label – Fiction Records / Polydor / Universal Music