As it turns out, my mid-thirties aren’t too late for my first Cure phase. And friends, this phase is deep, and I have no recourse against the urge to fill in the gaps in my collection for one of the deepest and most rewarding discographies of all time.

Just like Rome though, the Cure wasn’t built in a day. It took a few releases for them to find their own voice. But Faith, their third record, is where the spectral, teased-hair silhouette of their legacy started to take shape, introducing gossamer atmospheres and dirgelike tempos to their increasingly dark post punk. And while it’s still massively indebted to bands like Joy Division, Television, and Siouxsie and the Banshees (who Robert Smith would briefly play guitar for later), it’s the clearest picture of The Cure to come they had yet released.

Coming from the other side of their classic run from Head on the Door to Wish, there are a lot of surprises in the band’s earlier records. Three Imaginary Boys offers up a snapshot of garagey post punk more bouncy than dark, with Buzzcocksy irreverence and a delightfully bizarre Hendrix cover. The non-album single “Boys Don’t Cry” foresaw later pop hits like “Close to Me,” “Just Like Heaven,” and “Friday I’m In Love,” but those were still years down the road.

Their sophomore record Seventeen Seconds, written after touring with Siouxsie and the Banshees, took a big shift toward monochromatic gloom, with moody bass lines stepping into the forefront ahead of spindly guitars and martial drum beats, Smith’s tenor wailing over the sparse soundscape. It remains a watershed moment both for The Cure and for classic post punk, but it does little to show who the outfit would become.

On Faith though, the picture starts coming into focus, and offers an important stepping stone between post punk and gothic rock. From the opening bass plod of the dirgelike “Holy Hour,” it’s clear that the game has changed. It feels almost as significant a jump from Seventeen Seconds as that record felt from Three Imaginary Boys. The songs are longer and less urgent. The airy synths that would become a trademark of their sound make their first appearance, leading to some of the most gorgeous tracks in their catalogue, like the spellbinding “All Cats are Grey,” the Twin Peaks-y “Funeral Party,” and the majestic title track, which was both their first track to stretch beyond the six-minute mark and the first song to utilize the Bass VI, which would become a major part of their trademark sound.

There’s still a fair amount of aggressive, full-tilt post punk though. “Doubt” bursts out of “Funeral Party” like it’s kicking the door down, Simon Gallup’s punky bass line tethering Smith’s spastic guitar strums. “Primary” could pass for an outtake from Unknown Pleasures if it weren’t for Smith’s voice. Even the slower, gothier tracks are driven by beefy bass lines and stark drumming, even if the tempos aren’t as rapid.

While there’s little overt pop like the singles that would later launch them to superstardom, Faith remains catchy and accessible despite its gloom—which is the purest essence of The Cure. In a lot of ways, the dramatic atmospheres forecast their masterpiece Disintegration, which lives in much the same mood. While much has been said about that record being a sequel to Pornography, the gnarly gothy hellscape they would release a year after this, Disintegration feels much more like a spiritual successor to this record with its midtempo haziness than the urgent, growling guitar noise of Pornography. However, Faith isn’t worthwhile simply because it shows a fetal version of one of the most legendary bands in the world: it’s a great record in its own right, and an essential marker in one of the most significant creative careers in pop music history.