My Back Payges

A-Side: The Hanging Garden
B-Side: One Hundred Years
C-Side: A Forest (recorded live in Manchester)
D-Side: Killing An Arab (recorded live in Manchester)

Fiction Records FICG 15
Producer: The Cure & Phil Thornally

Released: July 1982
Purchased: 17/07/82

The Cure | The Hanging Garden | (Fiction) 1982 | Clever idea – an open-out double single pack. One 7″ is a live version of what is probably the best known Cure track, ‘A Forest’ sounding as powerful as ever and conveying a controlled aggression.

The other record is what’s probably the actual single, a track taken from their latest album. ‘The Hanging Garden’ has the familiar driving beat, rhythmic guitar and anguished vocals faded into the background, but lacks that extra something to make it strand out. (Noise! magazine, July 1982)

Don’t be fooled by the Banshee-esque title, “The Hanging Garden” is a dismal exercise in rolling, tumbling rhythmic textures. The Cure have drifted disappointingly and indulgently from the idyllic pop invention of their younger days, a decline in standards reinforced by the inclusion of the original versions of “Killing An Arab” and “A Forest” on one portion of this doublepack.

It’s just as well that The Cure have now jettisoned what was their finest moment “Boys Don’t Cry”, a song now being respectively refurbished in a Glasgow home by The Bluebells, who seem to be the sort of people that appreciate it more.

Believe it or not, I was actually the first person to write about The Cure, although it is not something I tell anyone but my closest acquaintances. (NME, 10/07/82)