The Cure - Faith

The Cure's "Faith" is often celebrated as a quintessential goth record and a highlight of their early work, despite being part of a "dark trilogy". While some find it less captivating than Seventeen Seconds, others praise its atmospheric depth, emotional resonance, and the way it captures a sense of existential dread and melancholic beauty. 

Reviewed by Tim Jarrett on April 25, 2005

This series of double-disc reissues of the Cure’s early albums, which I started to repost on the other blog with Three Imaginary Boys, Seventeen Seconds, Pornography and The Top, could not come at a more auspicious time. Thanks to bands like Interpol and Bloc Party, which owe debts to Robert Smith’s moody musical style and eccentric vocals respectively, the time is ripe for a rediscovery of the Cure’s legacy. And this series of reissues is definitely the right way to do it.

The sound on this reissue is gorgeously clean. At this point in their history, the revolving Cure line-up was down to a core of three: Smith on vocals and lead, Simon Gallup on bass, and Laurence Tolhurst on drums, with keyboardist Matthieu Hartley abruptly leaving days before the recording session started. Slimmed down to the elemental basics, the band’s playing is honed tight, with Gallup’s big bass sound up front and Smith’s guitars washing over the mix. (For better or worse, this is also the release where, perhaps to fill in some of the gaps in the mix, Smith started reverbing the hell out of his vocals.)

And some of the songs on this disc are stone classics. The major lyrical inspirations for the songs are said to be the death of “several friends and relations” and the terminal illness of Tolhurst’s mother, and that combined with Smith’s meditations on faith and disbelief provide the thematic core for the album. There is a broad sonic range within the basic bleakness of the album: “Primary” and “Other Voices,” which both appear on the excellent Staring at the Sea compilation, are jittery, paranoid fun, as is “Doubt,” while “The Funeral Party,” “The Drowning Man,” and “Faith” are majestic, epic stretches of unremitting rainy darkness. This release is where the Cure found the heart of darkness that was only hinted in earlier songs. The band wouldn’t release another album that was so thoroughly and completely dark until Disintegration closed out their classic period at the end of the 1980s, but the darkness that flowered on Faith is what many still consider to be the Cure’s classic sound, and it would reappear lyrically or musically on almost every other Cure release.

The bonus material is excellent on this release, as with the others in the series. Rounding out Disc 1 is a 27-minute instrumental called “Carnage Visors,” a soundtrack to a 1981 tour film and previously available on the cassette version of Faith. Disc 2 consists of home demos and studio out-takes of the “Faith” material, three previously unreleased songs cut during the Faith sessions, and majestic live performances from the summer of 1981. Disc 2 closes with the Cure’s landmark 1981 single “Charlotte Sometimes,” previously available on the Staring at the Sea compilation, in which the dead ground covered by the Faith sessions yields a sinisterly beautiful flower, a perfect goth pop single.

Ripped to MP3

1 - The Holy Hour 4:25 

2 - Primary 3:35 

3 - Other Voices 4:28 

4 - All Cats Are Grey 5:28 

5 - The Funeral Party 4:14 

6 - Doubt 3:11 

7 - The Drowning Man 4:50 

8 - Faith 6:43 

9 - Carnage Visors; The Soundtrack

Disc 2

1 - Faith (Robert Smith home instrumental demo 8/80) 2:56

2 - Doubt (Robert Smith home instrumental demo 8/80) 1:09

3 - Drowning (Group home instrumental demo 9/80) 1:52

4 - The Holy Hour (Group home demo 9/80) 4:48

5 - Primary (Morgan studio out-take 9/80) 4:22

6 - Going Home Time (Morgan studio guide vox out-take 9/80) 3:31

7 - The Violin Song ('Faith' studio guide vox out-take 2/81) 3:38

8 - A Normal Story ('Faith' studio guide vox out-take 2/81) 3:04

9 - All Cats Are Grey (Live "somewhere", "Summer 1980/1981") 5:37

10 - The Funeral Party (Live "somewhere", "Summer 1980/1981") 4:38

11 - Other Voices (Live "somewhere", "Summer 1980/1981") 4:45

12 - The Drowning Man (Live "Australasia", "Summer 1980/1981") 5:48

13 - Faith (live at Capitol Theatre, Sydney, August 1981) 10:23

14 - Forever (live "somewhere", "Summer" 1981) 9:19

15 - Charlotte Sometimes 4:13