After some five or six years of liking the Cure (including one Disintegration-fueled period of about a year in which the liking was more or less an obsession), I finally got round to buying Boys Don't Cry yesterday; of course, it's fab. The tracks I already knew - "Boys Don't Cry", "10.15 Saturday Night", "Jumping Someone Else's Train" and "Killing An Arab" - are uniformly brilliant, and at this point, much as I love "Charlotte Sometimes", "Just Like Heaven", etc, I'm very much feeling this earlier, spikier end of the band's oeuvre.
In many ways, this album's a bit of a one-off for them, and I can see why it's reckoned to be a classic of its kind - after Boys Don't Cry, the Cure successively took up minimal, gothy soundscapes, made some pretty idiosyncratic pop, and then spiralled into the magnificence of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Disintegration and the joy of Wish (the less said about their post-Wish albums the better, although Bloodflowers does have its moments), but they never returned to the distinctively edgy, post-punk-while-still-a-bit-punk, pop-infused, bedsit-dancey aesthetic of their debut (well, actually Boys Don't Cry is a partial repackaging of their 'true' debut, titled Three Imaginary Boys - but who's counting?)...all in all, a pretty unique album, and a real gem.
