Japanese Whispers

Product Information

I suggested that we were going to do something that’s kind of like a Disney take on jazz, based around the Aristocats. And suddenly everything we did started to sell.”

Yorkshire Pudding Pie company is officially a thing - and it might just be the most Yorkshire combo ever The major factor in which this release points the way to later developments, is an increasing in expressive range, both instrumentally and especially vocally. In particular, listen to Smith's vocals on the three wholly new songs, The Upstairs Room, The Dream and The Walk - while often typically melancholy, anguished, even despairing at times, he's also more energized, resonant and thoroughly engaging with a playful and whimsical element thrown in - his delivery is beautifully nuanced, dynamically and tonally wide-ranging without ever being overblown, with every syllable and word combination given emotional weight and meaning even during the most upbeat moments, complementing the ever varied and inventive synth-dominated textures beautifully, thus making even the poppiest song The Walk far more than a vapid synth-pop number. And speaking of which, the instrumental accompaniment is often wonderfully evocative with an attention to detail that's quite easy to overlook without following the lyrics - that sudden resounding keyboard swell during the line "With the first crash of thunder" and the soft and delicate sounding "The upstairs room is cool and bright" in The Upstairs Room, the synthesizer splashes accompanying "Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy" in The Dream, that floating, ringing synth line illustrating the verse starting "I kissed you in the water", the wailing counter-melody during "I passed the howling woman" and the slight oriental flavour befitting the "I saw you look like a Japanese baby" in The Walk. This is pop music yes; but all this means it's pop with depth, intelligence and substance. By now, O'Donnell had left and been replaced by Perry Bamonte and this was the line-up that recorded Wish in 1992. By this time, they were as close as ever to the mainstream audience, as the success of the single " Friday I'm in Love / Halo" evidenced. As a result, Wish was a commercial success, but it wasn't well received by the critics.When asked about The similarities between “The Walk” and “Blue Monday”, Robert Smith had this to say: This new direction would earn the band their first two top 20 hits in both the UK and Ireland. Japanese Whispers would also be the band’s first album to chart in the US. The following year, two additional (and even more successful, as it turned out) poppy singles were made available to the public - a grateful public, it seemed, with ‘The Walk’ reaching #12, and ‘The Lovecats’ faring even better, hitting an impressive #7 position in 1983 on the reformed-goths home turf. The singles marked a change of direction in The Cure’s sound, so it’s convenient then, that fans were offered an opportunity to collect the aforementioned singles (and their respective b-sides) in one, neat bundle entitled ‘Japanese Whispers’, to investigate this unassumingly important chapter in the bands eclectic catalogue. Bonus 2: At the time, The Cure didn’t enjoy playing songs like “The Lovecats” in concert, so instead, here’s a clip of “One Hundred Years” featuring the 1983 lineup… There are versions of The Walk that are singles rather than EPs, and those include just Walk alongside this, this being the b-side. And boy is it the exact b-side of The Walk you might expect. In that it is cut from similar cloth, and is far far less impressive or interesting. That is all I have to say about it.

On its original release, Japanese Whispers charted in the UK Album charts on December 24 in 1983, and was the first album by the band to enter the Billboard 200 in the US in early 1984. In 1985, with a new line up featuring Boris Williams on drums, Porl Thompson as an additional guitarist and a returning Simon Gallup on bass, The Cure built on their commercial success with the album The Head on the Door, and its singles " In Between Days / The Exploding Boy" and " Close to Me / A Man Inside My Mouth", which also were their first minor hits in America. The end result was a more effervescent synth-based pop with cheeky nods to classic jazz. The creative gamble paid off in the end. Japanese Whispers was the first Cure album to enter the US Billboard charts in early 1984 and opened the gate for The Cure to explore wider pastures.The 10 best rated carveries in Yorkshire that diners are raving about - including one with gravy 'to die for' Biography In January 1976, guitarist Robert Smith and bassist Michael Dempsey formed Malice with guitarist Mark Ceccagno while at school together. They were joined by a drummer known as Graham and his brother on vocals. By April of that year the line-up had changed to feature Smith and Dempsey alongside drummer Lol Tolhurst, guitarist Porl Thompson and vocalist Martin Creasy. When Creasy left the group in January 1977 the remaining members changed the group name to Easy Cure, and after two vocalists, Gary X and Peter O'Toole, passed through the group, the group setted as a quartet in September 1977 with Smith stepping up to the vocalist role alongside his role as guitarist. Following Thompson's departure in April 1978 the group became The Cure. Casbah, the cooling towers and Redgates: Things we took for granted in Sheffield that are gone forever

This pressing will be the first time Japanese Whispers is ever released on picture disc, and made available exclusively at The Cure Store& Rhino Store. In a 2004 interview with Rolling Stone, Smith detailed what contributed to the shift in style. “I didn’t want that side of life anymore; I wanted to do something that’s really kind of cheerful. I thought, “This isn’t going to work. No one’s ever gonna buy into this. It’s so ludicrous that I’m gonna go from a goth idol to a pop star in three easy lessons. In the video for The Lovecats, on the doublebass is Phil Thornalley, who produced The Cure’s Pornography. Thornalley would perform live with The Cure off and on until Simon Gallup rejoined the band for 1985’s The Head on The Door. Andy Anderson would round up the live lineup on drums, and also contributed to The Glove’s Blue Sunshine LP. Here is some footage of the The Cure in Paris recording LovecatsI tend to call this release The Fly - a gander at the cover should explain why. But that's not the title - when The Cure tied together this collection of singles and b-sides, they ( he morelike) listlessly titled it The Walk, which of course was the title of one of the singles. Which is fine. I'll call this The Fly if i want to, and you can't stop me. You know that would be a better name for it anyway. THE LOVECATS: sergegrone, jshopa, ivank79, dmpulp, JusticeShades, assasass, Anscules, musictoad, jdizzle777, dubstar, bazman, JICAMARCA, King Fahtah, Axver, mfl, metalbrain, Tairo, Altair82, sosadixon, montezuma, pczyzyk, MicrophoneFiend, ziggy32001, troutmask, CurtisLoew, Alfred Pok, steinib, Ben V, wretlinfu, jeliusbeanus, VirtualPope, kabouter, Usurping Python, SvetlanaMonsoon, ben007, Rube, bones r, sk8erboss94, Tezcatlipoca, elayblooze, flyers811, warpig01, TalkBoxist) On December 6th 1983, The Cure released the singles collection Japanese Whispers, which for all intents and purposes can be considered to be a proper Cure album, despite it being for the most part unrepresentative of the sound Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst had set out to create—far removed from the previous effort, 1982’s masterpiece Pornography.