The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys [Vinyl LP]

The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys [Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo
• Barcode: 602547875327
• Genre: Post-Punk / New Wave / Punk Rock
• Label: Fiction Records / Polydor
• Originally Released: 8 May 1979
• Reissue Released: 9 September 2016
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

Three Imaginary Boys is the debut studio album by The Cure — Robert Smith (guitar, vocals), Michael Dempsey (bass, vocals) and Laurence Tolhurst (drums) — originally released on 8 May 1979 on Fiction Records. Recorded and mixed at Morgan Studio 4 in Willesden, London and produced by Chris Parry — Fiction Records' founder, who had previously signed and produced The Jam for Polydor — the album was made when all three members were barely eighteen years old, and captures a band whose instincts outpaced their experience. It is a record that has aged more interestingly than most of its contemporaries: what seemed raw and unfinished in 1979 now sounds purposeful, its economy and directness a strength rather than a limitation.

The album's production history is notoriously complicated by Robert Smith's well-documented dissatisfaction with it. Parry exercised considerable control over both the track selection and the presentation: the song titles were deliberately absent from the original sleeve, tracks represented only by pictorial icons and images, and the cover art — three household appliances photographed by Martyn Goddard and illustrated with reference to the band members — was chosen without Smith's agreement. Most controversially, Smith wanted the album to open with an original composition but Parry insisted on including a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady" as the first track on Side B, and the album's track selection omitted several songs Smith considered stronger in favour of others the label preferred. The result was an album Smith has rarely spoken warmly about in retrospect, and which was subsequently superseded in the US market by the 1980 compilation Boys Don't Cry — a revised tracklist with different song choices tailored for American audiences. Despite all this, Three Imaginary Boys contains several defining early Cure performances: the crystalline, ticking tension of "10:15 Saturday Night", the taut post-punk energy of "Grinding Halt" and "Accuracy", and the eerie minimalism of "Subway Song". The closing hidden track, "The Weedy Burton" — an unlisted 34-second piece that ends the record — remained officially unnamed until the 2004 Deluxe Edition remaster.

The album found immediate favour with the British music press, receiving enthusiastic reviews that compared the band favourably to Wire and early Joy Division — two of the most significant reference points for the angular, stripped-back post-punk emerging from the UK at the time. It peaked at number forty-four on the UK Albums Chart, a respectable debut position for a band on an independent label with no mainstream radio support, and established The Cure as one of the most promising acts of the nascent post-punk scene. The trajectory from this record to Seventeen Seconds (1980) and Faith (1981) would be extraordinarily swift — within two years the band had transformed from an energetic but relatively conventional post-punk trio into the creators of some of the most atmospherically distinct and emotionally affecting music of the decade — but Three Imaginary Boys documents the beginning of that journey with a directness and unpretentious charm that rewards revisiting.

This 2016 reissue on Fiction Records / Polydor presents the album on 180 gram vinyl, remastered by Robert Smith from the original recordings. The pressing is housed in a sleeve reproducing the original artwork and comes with a printed colour inner sleeve and a digital download voucher. Made in the EU.

Tracklist

Side A

1. 10:15 Saturday Night
2. Accuracy
3. Grinding Halt
4. Another Day
5. Object
6. Subway Song

Side B

1. Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix cover)
2. Meathook
3. So What
4. Fire in Cairo
5. It's Not You
6. Three Imaginary Boys
7. The Weedy Burton (unlisted)

Credits

• Robert Smith – Guitar, Vocals
• Michael Dempsey – Bass, Vocals
• Laurence Tolhurst – Drums
• Chris Parry – Producer
• Mike Hedges – Engineer
• Robert Smith – Remastering (2016)
• Martyn Goddard – Photography
• Bill Smith – Design, Illustration, Photography
• Label – Fiction Records / Polydor