The Cure: Japanese Whispers - The Cure Singles (clear vinyl, remastered) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This 40th anniversary edition is the first time Japanese Whispers has appeared on clear vinyl, remastered by Robert Smith and Miles Showell at Abbey Road and housed in a Transclear sleeve. It was the first Cure album to enter the Billboard 200.

This edition

• Clear vinyl
• 40th anniversary edition
• Remastered by Robert Smith and Miles Showell at Abbey Road
• Transclear vellum sleeve
• Printed inner sleeve
• Pressed in Germany
• Stereo mix

About the album

After the bleak, heavy Pornography, Robert Smith did something nobody expected: he made pop singles. Japanese Whispers gathers the three he put out between November 1982 and November 1983, plus their B-sides, and the title is a play on the children's game Chinese whispers.

The band was in transition. Simon Gallup had left, Lol Tolhurst moved from drums to keyboards, and for "Let's Go to Bed" and "The Walk" the Cure was essentially Smith and Tolhurst, with Steve Goulding drumming on the first single's tracks. "Let's Go to Bed" is chilly synth-pop, "The Walk" bounces on a drum machine pulse, and "The Lovecats" is a jazzy, finger-snapping romp with Phil Thornalley on double bass and Andy Anderson on drums. The B-sides, from "The Dream" and "Just One Kiss" to "Speak My Language" and "Lament," are every bit as strange and good.

Those lead singles went on to Standing on a Beach, and the B-sides to Join the Dots, but this is where they first met. The inner sleeve offers a few alternative titles, Javanese Hipsters and Janet's Slippers among them, in case the game got away from anyone.

Also at Kops: more The Cure on vinyl · browse Industrial & Goth

Tracklist

Listen

On Fiction / Rhino (cat# RCV1 25076), a reissue of the 1983 compilation.