The Cure: Three Imaginary Boys [FICTION / RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 180g pressing comes with a printed colour inner sleeve. Three Imaginary Boys reached No. 44 in the UK, and Pitchfork called it "as original a record as anything else to spin off from the tail end of punk."

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Printed inner sleeve
• Pressed in the Czech Republic

About the album

Before the hair, the lipstick and the cathedral-sized gloom, the Cure were three young men from Crawley playing taut, wiry songs with a lot of space in them. Robert Smith on guitar and vocals, Michael Dempsey on bass and Lol Tolhurst on drums made this debut for Chris Parry's Fiction label, and it came out in May 1979.

Parry produced, with Mike Hedges engineering, and the sound is clean, nervy and spare. "10:15 Saturday Night" opens with its famous dripping tap and lonely guitar figure, "Grinding Halt" bounces along like a lost power-pop single, "Accuracy" and "Fire in Cairo" show Smith's melodic gift arriving early, and Dempsey takes the lead vocal on a skeletal cover of Hendrix's "Foxy Lady." In North America the songs were reshuffled with the early singles into the compilation Boys Don't Cry.

Sounds gave it five stars and Smash Hits called it a "brilliant, compelling debut." Bill Smith's sleeve shows a fridge, a lamp and a vacuum cleaner standing in for the band, and we've never had a more punctual set of musicians in the shop.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Fiction / Elektra / Rhino (cat# R1 523247), a reissue of the 1979 album.