The pop hook sensibilities, the gothic alienation, the deep, enveloping layers of sound all coalesced into a work that South Park fans will remember Kyle calling 'the best album ever.'Ĭure releases since have all offered something worthwhile. With Disintegration in 1989, everything came together, which is a tad ironic given the album's title. While these hits and other genre exercises of this era were departures from the dirges and youthful anger of earlier efforts, they reflect a constant quest for new sounds, textures, and instrumental approaches to serve the song. Later albums proved more diverse, with radio-friendly hits like 'In Between Days' and 'Close to Me' on 1985's The Head in the Door and 'Just Like Heaven' on Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me in 1987. Listen to the instrumental sections of 'The Hanging Garden.' The layered, shifting guitar lines take the various effects of the day and forge a cohesive, iconic gothic orchestration. Starting with Pornography in particular, you can hear an increased textural exploration and tonal interplay. That album and the ones that followed - Seventeen Seconds in 1980 and Faith in 1981 - were angular post-punk outcrys stocked with sneer and counterbalanced with undeniable hooks and grooves. He was playing offsets with endless chorus and delay decades before this aesthetic was normalized by the skinny-jeaned denizens of your local DIY venue. My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy might be the sonic manifestos of the genre, but The Cure were swimming in similar waters with 1982's Pornography.Įven before that, Smith played a Jazzmaster modded with a pickup from a cheap department store guitar to record the group’s debut studio album, Three Imaginary Boys in 1979, and could be seen with a Fender Bass VI a couple years later. Look at how popular shoegaze and its unyielding pedal worship has been over the past decade within indie rock circles.

Robert smith guitar rig