The cover says it all: three imaginary boys looking spectral and strange; lurid colour and an overall sense of nervous foreboding. This is the black pearl of the Cure's classic, 1981-3 period--not quite their most defiantly miserable album (that title still belongs, hands down, to Faith), but no picnic, either. The songs are slow, grave, and mysterious, evoking images of decay and desolation (from "Cold": "A shallow grave/ A monument to the ruined age... Everything as cold as life/ Can no-one save you?"), and set against these bleak vignettes, Smith's tremulous vocals have rarely sounded so forlorn. "Short Term Effect" describes a void: "No movement/ Just a falling bird/ Cold as it hits the bleeding ground", and it's a far cry from the playful eroticism of "Lovecats", or the sinister wish-fulfilment of "Close To Me". Still, it's possible to trace a direct line of descent, from this early triumph, to their glacial 1989 masterpiece, Disintegration. As ever, The Cure's greatest artistic highs are its most numbing lows. --Andrew McGuire