The Head on the Door [Deluxe Edition] [Remaster]

Performer: The Cure
Engineer: Dave Allen; Dave Allen
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: The Cure: Robert Smith (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Porl Thompson (guitar, keyboards); Laurence Tolhurst (keyboards); Simon Gallup (bass); Boris Williams (drums, percussion). Additional personnel: Ron Howe (saxophone). Producers: Robert Smith, Dave Allen, Howard Gray. The Cure: Robert Smith (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Simon Gallup (bass guitar); Laurence Tolhurst, Porl Thompson, Boris Williams. Personnel: Robert "Big Bert" Smith (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Porl Thompson (guitar, keyboards); Laurence Tolhurst (keyboards); Boris Williams (drums, percussion). Photographers: Ebet Roberts; Nick Knight; Richard Bellia; Andy Vella. After recording one of their darkest albums, 1983's The Top, the Cure regrouped and shuffled their lineup in 1984 and ended up changing their musical direction rather radically. While the band always had a pop element in their sound and even recorded one of the lightest songs of the '80s, "The Lovecats," The Head on the Door is where they become a hitmaking machine. The shiny, sleek production and laser-sharp melodies of "Inbetween Days" and "Close to Me" helped them become modern rock radio staples and the inspired videos had them in heavy rotation on MTV. The rest of the record didn't suffer for hooks and inventive arrangements either, making even the gloomiest songs like "Screw" and "Kyoto Song" sound radio-ready, and the inventive arrangements (the flamenco guitars and castanets of "The Blood," the lengthy and majestic intro to "Push," the swirling vocals on "The Baby Screams") give the album a musical depth previous efforts lacked. All without sacrificing an ounce of the emotion of the past, which songs as quietly desperate as "A Night Like This" and "Sinking" illustrate. With The Head on the Door, Robert Smith figured out how to make gloom and doom danceable and popular to both alternative and mainstream rock audiences. It was a feat the band managed to pull off for many years afterward, but never as concisely or as impressively as they did here. ~ Tim Sendra With THE HEAD ON THE DOOR Robert Smith and the boys achieve a distinctively Cure-like pop sensibility. These 10 songs combine the dreary dreamscape that is Smith's mind with melodies that are about as catchy as Goth music gets (just try not clapping your hands to "Close to Me"). Included on the album are "In Between Days" and "A Night Like This," each a successful single, and each a staple of the Cure's live show. Also noteworthy are the haunting lyrics of "The Blood" and "Kyoto Song," which Smith sings in his trademark high-pitched howl. Despite the gloom, this album represents perhaps the Cure's first real pop effort. It also represents a transition from the sparse instrumentation that characterizes the early Cure sound, to the fuller, more complex incarnation typical of the almost psychedelic soundscapes of later albums. After recording one of their darkest albums, 1983's The Top, the Cure regrouped and shuffled their lineup in 1984 and ended up changing their musical direction rather radically. While the band always had a pop element in their sound and even recorded one of the lightest songs of the '80s, "The Lovecats," The Head on the Door is where they become a hitmaking machine. The shiny, sleek production and laser-sharp melodies of "Inbetween Days" and "Close to Me" helped them become modern rock radio staples and the inspired videos had them in heavy rotation on MTV. The rest of the record didn't suffer for hooks and inventive arrangements either, making even the gloomiest songs like "Screw" and "Kyoto Song" sound radio-ready, and the inventive arrangements (the flamenco guitars and castanets of "The Blood," the lengthy and majestic intro to "Push," the swirling vocals on "The Baby Screams") give the album a musical depth previous efforts lacked. All without sacrificing an ounce of the emotion of the past, which songs as quietly desperate as "A Night Like This" and "Sinking" illustrate. With The Head on the Door, Robert Smith figured out how to make gloom and doom danceable and popular to both alternative and mainstream rock audiences. It was a feat the band managed to pull off for many years afterward, but never as concisely or as impressively as they did here. [The bonus disc that comes with the 2006 deluxe reissue of The Head on the Door is geared toward Cure obsessives but still may be of limited interest to others. The first four tracks are home-demo instrumentals, and while it's interesting to hear the humble origins of "Inbetween Days" and "Push," they don't really inspire repeated airings. The murky-sounding live bootleg recordings are inessential as well. What does makes the disc worth hearing is the brace of studio demos recorded in February of 1985. They include a couple of half-finished-sounding previously unreleased tracks (the strangely jazzy "Mansoildgone" and the ultra-poppy "Lime Time"), different takes of unreleased songs that showed up on Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities, 1978-2001, and versions of songs that made the album. These versions don't differ radically from the final versions, but they do show how the band refined their sound and came up with the crystal-clear and uncluttered sound of Head. The extra disc doesn't add huge amounts of value to the original album, but neither does it detract from the essential nature of The Head on the Door.] ~ Tim Sendra

Spin (p.107) - 4 star out of 5 -- "[A] 1985 poptopian tour de force." Uncut (p.91) - "[M]agnificently realised..."

Led by depressive pop prince Robert Smith, the Cure have taken their legions of fans on a journey from post-punk to gothic to new wave to art rock, stopping only for refills of hairspray along the way. An amazing band both live and in the studio, the Cure may have shifted its lineup numerous times, but Smith has remained a consistently fascinating rock icon throughout the changes. The group's most popular work (DISINTEGRATION, THE HEAD ON THE DOOR) was recorded in the 1980s, but it has held up incredibly well, leading to continued tours and albums despite exaggerated rumors of their demise.

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