The Cure’s 1979 debut Three Imaginary Boys has what is probably my favourite Post-Punk album cover. I like it even more than Unknown Pleasures which might be design heresy but its candy-coloured surrealism is more my cup of tea than the cold minimalism of the latter. It’s enigmatic and avant-garde but in a very droll, suburban English way which pretty much sums up The Cure themselves at the time. I think I bought it back then just because of the sleeve.
Before Robert Smith became a lipsticked Goth icon the band were thought to be deliberately anti-image to the point of dull anonymity. The design takes that idea to the extreme of not having any photos of the band on the cover and having them be represented by boring household appliances. Apparently Robert Smith is the lamp, drummer Lol Tolhurst is the fridge, and bassist Michael Dempsey the Hoover.
Taking this wilful obscurity to another level, not only are there no band photos but there aren’t any song titles anywhere on the sleeve either. Instead, on the back are a series of pictures representing each track. You have to work out which is which, not easy when you don’t know the song titles in the first place and have to listen to the album to figure even that out. No Wiki or Discogs in those days.
Some of them were obvious (“Meathook”, “Fire in Cairo”) while others took a bit more working out (the split bags of sugar is “So What”). The puzzle is repeated on the record label with the pictures reduced to simple little icons.
I can’t remember if I found this clever or annoying when I was 17. Probably the former because an album cover that’s an exercise in semiotics is just the sort of thing to appeal to a teenager with pretensions. If nothing else it did make you listen to the album more closely.
The sleeve was designed by Bill Smith whose portfolio also includes nearly all The Jam’s albums and singles and Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. I think it’s heavily influenced by the idiosyncratic work Barney Bubbles was doing for Elvis Costello at the time (like this and this) and has some very Bubbles-esque lines and squiggles on the inner sleeve.
Smith called Three Imaginary Boys the most memorable cover out of all the ones he’s designed over the years, but The Cure apparently weren’t too keen on it or the album itself. Robert Smith has complained that he had no control over the tracklisting or the design, and I suppose I’d be pissed off too if someone implied I had the personality of a lamp.
Download: Fire In Cairo – The Cure (mp3)
Download: Subway Song – The Cure (mp3)
cryingallthewaytothechipshop.wordpress.com 
Something completely different, but equally great, from the four men at Swindon:
http://typophonic.com/1978-xtc-go-2-album-cover/
GvH
LikeLike
Very insightful. I bought this album second-hand years after it came out and found the lack of conventional tracklisting rather annoying and pretentious. But then, I’m not a designer or artist so I bow to your superiority in this field.
It seems a lot of current acts put records out these days with no identity on the front sleeve – no band name, no title – which I find annoying. Wilful obscurity is fine up to a point, but I can’t help but wonder why you wouldn’t want to associate your name with your your product. Can you imagine Heinz making baked beans or ketchup without their brand name on the label? Of course not.
Or maybe I’ve missed the point entirely…
LikeLike
Rock music and baked beans are different things, you can get away with a certain amount of annoying pretension in the former. Being unconventional can be a selling point
LikeLike
I think that the Three Imaginary Boys sleeve became more interesting when viewed in context of the next 10 years of their career and how they developed on a journey of different phases, which is the main reason I loved them at the time. Always changing, always surprising.
Unfortunately they became so successful in the early 90s that they stopped changing and developing and remained stuck with a recognisable ‘Cure sound’.
shame!
LikeLike
I did prefer their jangly pop stuff. Having loved their first few singles I remember hearing ‘A Forest’ for the first time in a Peel session and thinking ‘What the hell is this?’
LikeLike
“I did prefer their jangly pop stuff.”
Yeah, me too. I was annoyed at the phase when that was supposed to indicate what a crude clot you were.
Excellent discussion of album graphics. A serious loss after the LP era ended.
LikeLike