The Cure's first album 3 Imaginary Boys verged on generic but sprightly punk-pop, although Robert Smith's wracked vocals and oblique take on love and alienation did suggest a man with a plan. He had a way with melody too, did our Robert, as evidenced by Killing An Arab (hmm...) and 10.15 On A Saturday Night.
But nobody expected him to help invent Goth, least of all teenage me who first heard this icy slice of lovelorn angst wandering around Harrods' Way-In Living department with my sister, looking for a dinner set (don't ask - I can't remember).
I had to ask one of the shop assistants who was playing and although their own guess was a little alarming (Pink Floyd) they were kind enough to track down someone who did know.
The Cure (or rather Robert Smith), of course, are one of those Eighties acts who are still around now and, although I can't claim to have much time for their recent output, Seventeen Seconds (from whence sprang A Forest) and their next album 1981's Faith, remain among my top 100 favourite records. Yes, of course they're slathered with ludicrous pretension and overblown teen melodrama but that's how life was for me then - melodramatic and pretentious. Point me out anyone who has loved boys playing guitars and who claims to have never indulged in a little preciousness - especially in their mid-to-late teens - and I'll point you out a liar.
Check out the video. Enjoy the laughably literal video treatment ('I know, let's film it in a forest!') and, more remarkably, Robert Smith's proto Simon Cowell haircut. The waistband on his kecks seems to be arranged alarmingly high too. Hmm, and, of course that dastardly builder was called Bob....
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