The Cure – Boys Don't Cry

Hi,
By looking at this album on Discogs to it is closed to mine, I discover inconsistencies between the 2nd image (back cover) and the 4th and 5th images that should be an extract of information printed on the back cover. You can see few data on the 2nd one while there are more details on the 4th/5th images.
So the last 2 images are not for the same album.

Shouldn't this be listed as a "compilation", rather than an "album"? After all, it is a collection of songs from previously released singles and a previous album.

This pressing sounds amazing. Totally recommended. Full of dynamics. 10 more words

Nothing on my copy re: matrix numbers, I've had it from new circa 1979

There’s much to be heard on Three Imaginary Boys (aka Boys Don’t Cry), not the least being the stunning tracks “10:15 Saturday Night,” along with the stunning “Fire In Cairo,” where the sounds defined by these tracks would dance around within all of the Cure’s best material.”

Sure the album sounds angry (though one must only the year it which it surfaced), even urgent, recorded sparsely, nearly live over three nights, and while Smith took no liking to the chilled veneer that settled over the songs, today it all comes off as a perfect reflection of 1979. I’m sure that the Cure fully set out to immerse themselves in the punk aspects of the day, and while they did, they also didn’t, creating an intoxicating sound that stood toe to toe with the Clash, a sound that inferences punk without being punk. “Fire In Cairo” gives way to some of the best lyrics of the era, though it was a song with little or no plot, and certainly not an actual reference to the said fire in Cairo, leaving me to describe the album as a series of melodic kooky singles strung together.

The album may have made more sense lineally if Robert Smith had been permitted by the record label to arrange his own tracking order, along with the album jacket art, a Polaroid snapshot of something which pretty much no one could figure out. I on the other hand, being in America, received the the version of the album known as Boys Don’t Cry, an album that included the title track, one that was oppressively absent from the European presentation. All this leads me to say that Boys Don’t Cry is majestically and resoundingly different than The Cure’s British debut Three Imaginary Boys as its restructured track list gives the album an openly different feel. While Three Imaginary Boys focused on slower and weirder visions, Boys Don’t Cry sonically jettisons those in favor of recently released singles such as “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” and the iconic title track. Not surprisingly, Boys Don’t Cry has held up far better over years, as it has a stronger song selection and a greater sense of presence and immediacy, leaving the British record to make the Cure sound like pretentious faux-art school intellectuals.

*** The Fun Facts: Prior to this release, the band was know as the Easy Cure.

The album’s artwork on Three Imaginary Boys, much to the displeasure of the band was insisted upon by their record label and Fiction’s boss Chris Parry, featuring a lamp, a fridge, and a vacuum cleaner, where each household object represented a member of the band in interviews with journalists. Of course, according to drummer Lol Tolhurst in his memoir “Cured: The Story of Two Imaginary Boys,” nobody wanted to be the fridge! The artwork for the revised American edition feature a sort of burned postcard, depicting the song “Fire In Ciro”.

Review by Jenell Kesler