Faith

I finally got a copy of Faith by The Cure on CD. This replaces the copy on cassette which was taped from the vinyl borrowed from Glenburn Public Library (no sorry, home taping wasn't killing music). I listened to it again in it's entirety - it's one of those records that sounds better in one sitting - as I drove on a dark, cold, quiet morning. Within seconds I was 19 again and trudging through snow on my commute to Springburn College, a time when this album was one of a Stereo One carrier bag full of records that provided a soundtrack to my first sashays into a post-high school world.

More than a few years on, not much has changed. It is still a breathtaking record that leaves me wide eyed and shivery. The music is as simple and ingenious as I remember. Lyrically, as a 19 year-old listening to what was (at time of recording) a 22 year-old's bookish, overwrought world view it sounded unflinching, brave and stark. Today, with nearly 20 years of something resembling perspective, the brutality is tempered by the sadness - and I realise it isn't quite the indulgence to revel in pop record sadness as it used to be either. That doesn't make Faith any less rewarding a listen, it just means your skin is a little thicker in some places and thinner in others. I spent a lot of my youth wrestling with The Cure's substantial musical cache but always came back to this record for a peculiar kind of comfort. I think I subconsciously avoided buying this record as I think I wanted to preserve it they way I enjoyed it back then. I needn't have worried.

I was not at this gig as I was only 11. Billy Sloan was. How nice for him. And us.