Album a Day: The Cure - Boys Don't Cry

Sometimes referred to as a compilation, Boys Don't Cry served as the American debut release from The Cure. Boy's Don't Cry is essentially the same as the band's official debut album Three Imaginary Boys minus several songs (Meathook, It's Not You, and a cover of Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady recorded during a soundcheck with bassist Michael Dempsey on vocals) and replacing them with several other songs including the title track Boy's Don't Cry, Plastic Passion, Jumping Someone's Else Train, Killing an Arab, and World War. Three of the tracks (Object, World War, and Foxy Lady) were choices made by producer Chris Parry despite being despised by Robert Smith and in years later found their way off of the CD release and adding in So What. If you didn't tell me this was a compilation of songs I would feel pretty confident it was just a really great album as the flow is fantastic. I love this early work by The Cure as there are a ton of punk and goth rock elements infused in that sound that would later become the staple of this West Sussex band. Smith and the rest of the band have often pointed to many of these songs as being lightweight and because of their relative inexperience they had little say during production, however there's a lot of great content with songs like Killing An Arab which Smith says his attempt at adapting moments of Albert Camus' seminal and heavy-handed philosophical novel The Stranger or the poetic imagery of Fire In Cairo. Smith has said that he originally envisioned The Cure as being a punk rock Beatles, and so its only fitting that like the Beatles he should think of this early material as somehow less than. I'll say it, I love The Beatles early pop music with songs like I Wanna Hold Your Hand and I can say the same about a song like Boys Don't Cry. Sure, this isn't the deepest material or most complex but that shouldn't lessen the aesthetic value and certainly doesn't make it less enjoyable. This 1979 release is a fun album and these songs (along with the remaining ones from Three Imaginary Boys) should be appreciated for their historical value as they would be the bulk of the material made before The Cure would embark on a tour which would see Smith pulling double duty for his band and as the guitarist for the headlining band Siouxsie & The Banshees which had recently seen the departure of John McKay. According to Smith, playing as a Banshee greatly changed the direction of The Cure. Favorite Tracks: Boys Don't Cry, 10.15 Saturday Night, Jumping Someone Else's Train, Killing An Arab, Fire In Cairo, and Three Imaginary Boys