Faith (Deluxe Edition)

The Cure’s third album, 1981’s Faith, features a core trio responding to the chiseled minimalism of its predecessor, 1980’s Seventeen Seconds, with a deeper emotional resonance and carefully orchestrated keyboards from leader Robert Smith. Recorded at a time when the band was experimenting with drugs and still establishing itself as an iconoclastic voice, Faith is a thoroughly assured collection of fully-realized compositions that flirt with questions of faith, fate and somber, sobering realities. Yet unlike the emotional excesses that would lead the band to their future extreme heights, the songs here are intense, yet restrained. “Doubt” steps on the accelerator and points towards the Cure sound most familiar to its later fans. However, most of the cuts follow a solemn form. “All Cats Are Grey” posts an eternal yearn in its slow, protruding chords, while “The Funeral Party” marches through a wintry field as the voices echo in what sounds like a futile, existential void.