In the spectrum of self-conscious postpunk British bands, the Cure fall squarely between Wire's sophisticated, jagged architectonics and the Undertones' concise, wide-eyed pop music. They incorporate a little of each. I guess this means that these guys average out at the college-sophomore level, which is appropriate, since their first English single (the desert-spare "Killing an Arab") was based on an Albert Camus novel. The Stranger. It's hard to pull off such a feat without being called pretentious, but Boys Don't Cry, the Cure's American debut, proves they can transcend their Comp. Lit. 201 (Elementary Angst) scenarios.

The Cure's bass-heavy, threeman sound works like a telescoping lens, focusing and magnifying a hook around a central line or image that makes each vignette ring true — like the one piece of back ground bric-a-brac that makes a movie set seem real. Songwriter Robert Smith has a gift for close-ups: the apt, arty phrase or stinging, succinct guitar overdub. In "Fire in Cairo," he turns a simile into a mantra (his girlfriend's hair burns like "f-i-r-i i-n c-a-i-r-o") and reiterates it over a bumpy dance beat. Smith's sound-effects guitar in "Killing an Arab" — either crackling through the mix like reverberating gunfire or stringing snake-charmer melodies — transforms the terse lyrics into a you are-there slide show: "Standing on a beach with a gun in my hand/Staring at the sea Staring at the sand Staring down the barrel at the Arab on the ground."

Chris Parry's crystal-clear production separates Michael Dempsey's bass and Lol Tolhurst's drums, as if to fence off a large patch of silence in the center. Along with neat production touches like the clattering trash-can percussion that echoes into the distance on the fade of "Jumping Someone Else's Train," the empty spaces highlight the group's dynamic variations. Compositions like "10:15 Saturday Night" and "Subway Song" (about a girl trailed in the shadows) have the edgy quietude of reality. Every drawn breath, each finger snapped in the darkness, falls distinctly and significantly.

Amid the Cure's nerve-edge numbers — hushed and haunting or insistent enough to make you dance to your own jitters — the title track is the odd tune out. "Boys Don't Cry" is a sweetly anguished pure-pop single, carried by an aching, infectious guitar hook and the singer's taffypull croon. Though it doesn't have the film-clip explicitness of Smith's other songs, the words offer a nice twist on the standard lovelorn script: boy meets girl, mistreats girl, loses girl, yearns for girl but won't appear vulnerable — even to get her back. Hell, if Robert Smith ever decides to quit rock & roll, he's got a great career ahead of him writing for the movies.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."