The Cure – ‘Three Imaginary Boys’
The luxury of picking apart any debut album always comes with the burden of acknowledging everything else that came before. Post-punk, in the context of The Cure, is about as ambiguous a label as you can get. And yet, something about this particular springboard feels all-encompassing of everything good about new bands—specifically, the core of restlessness without the fear of hitting the mark.
Three Imaginary Boys joins a well-established pool of British-borne, punkish players, arriving at the same juncture as genre-defining masterpieces like London Calling and Unknown Pleasures, each unsuspecting in their own bitterness and brittleness, a signifier of a turning point for a generation squirming for relief. Robert Smith, on the other hand, places his own spin on the all-too-familiar game, opting for whimsy over political commentary without deviating from convention.
And yet, with this particular foray, it’s impossible to ignore the flavours of each and every innovator that shaped Smith’s broader vision, enabling him to explore his own brand of darkness using their templates as conduits for self-expression. That’s not to say that The Cure are imitators—their sound feels almost entirely their own—but within almost every track, there’s a taste of something closer, like the faces your mind conjures up in dreams to evoke logic-less narratives rooted in real desires. Or, in this case, nightmares.
That’s exactly the space in which Three Imaginary Boys thrives. You can hear the essence of David Bowie and even remnants of ska as we divulge heart-pumping anthems like ‘Object’ and ‘Grinding Halt’, but while these masterful architects thrive on soundscapes that feel crisp and direct, Smith places ambiguity at the forefront, prioritising moody and gloomy atmospheres to invoke deep thought and even a deeper feeling.
With that chase for something more visceral that ventures beyond the usual parameters of punk rock, Three Imaginary Boys feels and sounds like Smith’s ultimate search for himself amid the chaos, where the simplicity of conforming transforms into something far less expected, even a little more pop-leaning in the process. And that’s where it all comes together, in those lesser-appreciated moments like ‘Fire in Cairo’, when all sense of familiarity becomes displaced by enjoyment in its most basic form.
However, The Cure’s take on “basic” pop-influenced rock feels less like a forced attempt to follow trends and more like an effortless expression of the things they love the most. After all, nothing beats a flawless run of good tunes, even if they’re conceptually simple or lacking in social awareness. But here, the band does more than deliver; they allow different ideas and concepts to flow freely, like loosening the reins from blistered hands and finally letting the rain pour.
Beneath all of that, therefore, there’s the added thrill of something darker beneath the surface, like Smith’s inner mind has gushed all over the page with blood-soaked passion, dampening and deepening the already intense hues of an era defined by its most aggressive punk outfits. With songs like the title track and ’10:15 Saturday Night’, the band executes a subtle push-pull between rock and gothic wave, like the delicate dance of ghostly fingertips up the spine in the dead of night.
Perhaps it’s also the underlayer of kitsch that carries the entire story of such a hard-hitting debut, with playfulness not going amiss on tracks like ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, lathering up The Cure’s broader offering with a promise of something quirkier, far away from the rawness of other workings from bands like Joy Division or the desperate plight of others to attach themselves to virtue signalling in trying times.
But The Cure aren’t exactly concerned with all of that—not when their waves of intent stem from something more intrinsically dark, like the bitter taste of better memories lost in the haze of a world weighed down by relentless destroyers. Here, though, those destroyers lurk only in the mind, making Three Imaginary Boys an inward lament on everything that makes the heart swell and shatter, as you claw endlessly to piece it back together.
Even in the more overly solemn tracks, like ‘Winter’, any temptation to latch onto hope amid the rhythms feels somewhat misshapen by a different kind of resignation, like slowly falling into acceptance just as Smith seems to have, lost in the endearing swirl of “remembering the love that we came alive” before everything else lost its colour saturation. But the energy remains, if even just for quiet contemplation, as if there’s always peace to be found with a broken heart.
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