Japanese Whispers

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The major factor in which this release points the way to later developments, is an increasing in expressive range, both instrumentally and especially vocally. In particular, listen to Smith's vocals on the three wholly new songs, The Upstairs Room, The Dream and The Walk - while often typically melancholy, anguished, even despairing at times, he's also more energized, resonant and thoroughly engaging with a playful and whimsical element thrown in - his delivery is beautifully nuanced, dynamically and tonally wide-ranging without ever being overblown, with every syllable and word combination given emotional weight and meaning even during the most upbeat moments, complementing the ever varied and inventive synth-dominated textures beautifully, thus making even the poppiest song The Walk far more than a vapid synth-pop number. And speaking of which, the instrumental accompaniment is often wonderfully evocative with an attention to detail that's quite easy to overlook without following the lyrics - that sudden resounding keyboard swell during the line "With the first crash of thunder" and the soft and delicate sounding "The upstairs room is cool and bright" in The Upstairs Room, the synthesizer splashes accompanying "Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy" in The Dream, that floating, ringing synth line illustrating the verse starting "I kissed you in the water", the wailing counter-melody during "I passed the howling woman" and the slight oriental flavour befitting the "I saw you look like a Japanese baby" in The Walk. This is pop music yes; but all this means it's pop with depth, intelligence and substance.

Smith told Rolling Stone with a laugh that after spending time recovering at his parents' house after touring in support Pornography, he ‘decided to be a pop star’: Prior to the recording of their following album, growing tensions between Smith and an increasingly unreliable Tolhurst prompted the latter's exit from the band. He was replaced by Roger O'Donnell. On December 6th 1983, The Cure released the singles collection Japanese Whispers, which for all intents and purposes can be considered to be a proper Cure album, despite it being for the most part unrepresentative of the sound Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst had set out to create—far removed from the previous effort, 1982’s masterpiece Pornography.

One of the most iconic bands of the '80s goth/dark scene (and probably one of the most iconic bands overall), The Cure's career has suffered a bit for having absolutely amazing singles within sometimes merely just good albums (with a few exceptions, of course - mainly in the early and mid years of their career). Despite it all, they have been extremely influential and theirs is one of the most devoted and certainly one of the most 'peculiar' fan bases (palm tree bushy haircuts, anyone?). They've been around for 30 years and although their last two albums have been very patchy and not as relevant as before, their '80s legacy still sounds loud and clear today." - dmpulp

I suggested that we were going to do something that’s kind of like a Disney take on jazz, based around the Aristocats. And suddenly everything we did started to sell.”

Shows

Disintegration, released in 1989, made them almost superstars on the strength of their single " Lovesong / 2 Late", even if the album was dark and not as catchy as their previous "mainstream" albums. They tried to capitalize that success releasing the mix album Mixed Up, and an accompanying new single, " Never Enough / Harold and Joe", which showed prevailing dancefloor influences. However, even if it sold respectably, it wasn't well received. In the video for The Lovecats, on the doublebass is Phil Thornalley, who produced The Cure’s Pornography. Thornalley would perform live with The Cure off and on until Simon Gallup rejoined the band for 1985’s The Head on The Door. Andy Anderson would round up the live lineup on drums, and also contributed to The Glove’s Blue Sunshine LP. Here is some footage of the The Cure in Paris recording Lovecats The end result was a more effervescent synth-based pop with cheeky nods to classic jazz. The creative gamble paid off in the end. Japanese Whispers was the first Cure album to enter the US Billboard charts in early 1984 and opened the gate for The Cure to explore wider pastures. in many ways was quite an unusual year for The Cure - quite apart from what relatively few new songs they produced being strikingly different in style and sound from anything they'd previously released this decade (Let's Go to Bed and Just One Kiss from the tail end of 1982 apart), this was the first full year of their career in which no full length album was released (Smith did produce one with Steve Severin as The Glove, which is well worth a listen, but that's for another review!). The Cure were still in limbo, with Smith and Gallup, who'd quit the band in June 1982, not even on speaking terms, and without a regular drummer with Tolhurst having switched to keyboards the previous year. And Smith himself was unrelentingly busy with a number of side projects, including recording and touring with Siouxsie and the Banshees, his studio work with The Glove and a few other smaller assignments that added up to a hectic and not exactly stress-free schedule. Japanese Whispers is the third compilation album of Cure singles and B-sides released between Nov 1982 and Nov 1983, originally released by Fiction Records. Recorded during a transitional phase after bassist Simon Gallup left following the Pornography promo tour, Andy Anderson joined the band on drums, while former drummer Lol Tolhurst switched to keyboard duties, and Phil Thornalley played bass. The album includes Cure standbys such as Let’s Go to Bed, The Walk, and The Lovecats, as well as the fantastic b-side Just One Kiss.