If there’s one thing Robert Smith hates, it’s being pigeonholed. After releasing a gloomy trio of goth rock classics in the early part of the decade, Smith began to feel like his band was misunderstood as producers of monochromatic dourness. With a slightly shifted lineup, they released a trio of standalone pop singles that shattered the conception that they were one note.
And while that same pop perfection failed to infiltrate their following album, The Top, their 1985 record The Head on the Door was a masterpiece of hook-laden pop songs that didn’t forsake their mastery of dark atmospheres.
Smith has said that while making Pornography, he wanted to get all of the ugliness he was feeling out of his system and put it onto a record. And by most accounts, he did exactly that. So when the Cure went to make The Top, there wasn’t as much fuel for the goth rock fire. That record still had plenty of the same gloomy darkness as the three records prior, but it didn’t sound convincing after Pornography. Even its poppier moments were weighed down by the murkiness of the gloomier tracks.
But The Head on the Door is a complete return to formula. They had already perfected poppy post punk with their early single “Boys Don’t Cry” before traversing down the gothic rabbit hole after a tour with Siouxsie and the Banshees. And in hindsight, “Boys Don’t Cry” might have represented a fork in the road offering the choice of what kind of band they wanted to be. In 1980, they took the darker path, but in 1985, they seem to return to that intersection to see what’s down the other side.
The resulting album would make them mega stars, and with good reason. This record is really where The Cure came into their own, perfecting their brand of bittersweet goth pop that no one has done as well since. The tracks are amazingly varied, even incorporating elements of flamenco and carnivalic Vaudeville. No doubt, this expansion in sound is thanks to an expanded lineup, including returning bassist Simon Gallup who left after Pornography and multi-instrumentalist Porl Thompson, who was a member of Easy Cure before he left for art school and they went on to become the Cure (Porl also painted the cover for Faith).
The pop hits here are absolutely stunning. “In Between Days” opens the record with a bonafide bang, offering up a tragic break up song wrapped in an irresistible new wave hit. “Push” is practically arena rock. “The Baby Screams” is heavy on the synths, a la New Order or The Human League. “Close To Me” is as perfect a pop song as they ever wrote, putting isolationist angst to a beat catchier than anything else you’d find on the pop charts (it’s also worth mentioning that the single version includes a section of real horns that is absent from the album).
Which isn’t to say their dark side is completely absent. The bass tone on “Screw” is positively filthy, even as poppy as the rest of the track is. “Kyoto Song” creeps along an Asian scale. “A Night Like This” jangles through a minor progression that not even the ripping sax solo can save from sadness, inviting though that sadness may be. Album closer “Sinking” could sneak onto the tracklist of Faith without much trouble, riding a moody bass line and waves of keyboards through the sort of gloomy atmosphere that only they have perfected.
The album went on to be a massive success, both in their native UK and in the US, where it would reach 59 on the Billboard Chart. But more importantly, it would usher in one of the most important runs of albums by any group in pop history. It kickstarted the Cure’s classic period, which would continue with Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Disintegration (itself a rejection of being pigeonholed as a pop group), and Wish. But even against the massive albums that would follow it, The Head on the Door remains an indelible piece of pop mastery that stands eye to eye against their more ambitious masterpieces. For any newcomers to the Cure, it’s a wonderful starting point, offering up an impressive breadth of what they do best with a listener-friendly 37-minute runtime (most of the records that follow are twice as long). Even nearly forty years after its release, it is as fresh as ever, and remains both a great introduction to the group and one of the most important works by one of the most important bands in the world.