Boys Don't Cry

Out of print in the U.S.! The Cure's UK debut album, Three Imaginary Boys, was repackaged for other countries by removing album tracks and replacing them with non-album A-sides, resequencing the track order, adding new artwork and renaming the album Boys Don't Cry. For all intents and purposes, this was a much stronger album than the original UK release and continues to be a favorite amongst fans. 12 tracks including 'Jumping Someone Else's Train', 'Killing An Arab', 'Fire In Cairo', 'Plastic Passion' and the title track. They've never sounded as excited since!

When Robert Smith's long-running group made this debut (actually the resequenced American version of the British Three Imaginary Boys), they weren't the Goth-and-reverb, new wave heroes they later became; they were just a trio of disaffected kids who didn't like what was on the radio, because it wasn't smart enough or dark enough. Smith's lyrics are bleakly sarcastic (as when he spells out the title of "Fire in Cairo") and literate (the single "Killing an Arab," a nihilistic sketch based on a scene from Albert Camus's The Stranger). The band matches them with swift, tingling arrangements that dodge skillfully around rock's machismo and self-indulgence, even when Smith launches into the occasional gnarled little solo. --Douglas Wolk