In praise of ... Seventeen Seconds by The Cure

Lovely album indeed, solid writeup. Haven't heard it in a long while and I intend to keep it that way for another month until the reissue, when it will be fresher to my ears all around.

It's interesting how the breakdown among the three albums from 17 to Pornography run in terms of fan faves. Dan's choice, f'r instance, is Pornography.

I completely checked out after reading this.

cannot be beat.

this has reminded me how much i love that album. one of two vinyl records that i wore out...

Loveless. what, you didn't ask? ok, sorry.

Okay, this is the second time I've picked on Paul today, but come on now; "tuneless" is really not applicable to anything that The Cure has put out, ever.

It would be really nice if people would stop using the word "tuneless" as if it was shorthand for "I don't like it"; a tune doesn't have to be repetitive or tightly-structured.

If I woke up one day and discovered that Pornography was "too heavy", I would probably shoot myself in the face.

We don't need a dissection but simple basic knowledge would be nice.

yep, that's your mom. sorry dude.

Care to elucidate.

"Football is a game played by 22 players. And then Germany win." (lineker)

More than anybody else on ILM, I would immediately react in a very hostile way towards an album that appeared tuneless in my ears. And, no, "Pornography" is not tuneless. There are a lot of nice melodic tunes in there. Only the drumming is extremely annoying at times.

I'm not exactly sure I'd call this track upbeat. I mean, it's basically about deception and domination in a clearly mentally abusive relationship. When I think "upbeat Cure song," I'm more inclined to cite "Love Cats" or "Friday, I'm in Love" or something.

In terms of the rest of Seventeen Seconds, while it's not my favorite album of theirs, "M" and "At Night" have always been dear to me.

My fave Cure album would probably be the Head on the Door. I adore Disintegration, but it can be overwhelming in certain spots.

"The Head on the Door": Didn't I used to have a kitten?
"Kiss Me x 3": Look at the beautiful kittens, they're dancing! They're dancing! They're ... wait, now I see dancing kittens everywhere ... they're all around me ... get the kittens out of my sight ... get them out of my fucking head ... NOW NOW ... oh, a cockatoo! OK, that's an improvement.
"Disintegration": I used to have a kitten. In the end, though, All kittens DIE and ABANDON you to a life of LONELINESS and MISERY. So you're better off not owning one.

BAhahahahahahahahahahaha

I like any random Thelonious Monk album about ten million times better than this nonsense.

But that's just me.

http://www.gulfcoastvillas.com/thecure/gallery/robert/robert10.jpg

Personally, I think one of these musicians looks more inclined towards musical nonsense way more than the other.

I'm not exactly sure I'd call this track upbeat
i suppose i used an inexact word to describe play for today, alex in nyc. i meant upbeat in the sense of lively, not neccessary in the sense of optimistic or euphoric.

faith is on ym record player right now. somehow i have the feeling i did never properly listen to it. the arrangements are rather sparse, i like that. the first side is excellent. but on the second things get a little boring and it kind of drags along. doubt is unmemorable. smith's singing bothers me on the drowning man. faith is very sparse/slow and would make a good lullaby. not bad altogether but faith definitely lacks the punch and the darkness of 17 seconds.

i got monk alone last week. his unorthodox way of playing the piano is phantastic. i am quite happy to live in a world where i can enjoy both, the cure and thelonious monk.

are we all stupid and rhythmless? i mean, i know i am, but all of my fellow countrymen too?! even poor old Rob Smith? shit, what a blow. i guess i have to hawk all of my English records now. i just hope i can find someone slightly less narrowed-minded and anal who i can trick into buying all this shit, even though it's just silly old beautiful, atmospheric, cathartic, haunting, heart-rending, gut-wrenching, rhythmless rock 'n' roll. it's not even nearly jazz. ha! i mean, what's the point?!

i'm just glad we had this conversation before i went any further down the wrong road.

This is quite possibly the most offensively pretentious thing I've ever read on ILM.

17 Seconds & Faith are records with many elements that sound quite unusually disconected, opaque or lost. Robert's vocals, those pulsing drum synth sounds throughout, that ominous scrunchy tape degredation edit from 'A Reflection' to 'A Forest', all of 'Three' which is an exercise in queasy studio techniques.

To get to the point, it makes me think that maybe the overall sound is a lot of what Cure fans crave when they wish for Smith's return to the classic, so called miserable, songwriting days. You couldn't go back and produce an album that sounded like those two, it'd never get past the record company execs.

I know I'm salivating at the prospect of the next three reissues and their extra tracks.

Remember: reissues, click heels three times and...

xpost

17 Seconds is THE perfect album for a crystal-clear sub-frigid early December day when you're contemplating the first snowfall of the year through a frosted window and waiting for the heater to clank on.

Shhh, Lovebug, Stormy'll now say you are just an ephemeral reviewer or something. (I think they're both pretty great myself -- though I know the Cure better, and not only do I not make any apology for it, I'm constantly amazed at Stormy's belief in objective standards!)

I'm STOKED about the upcoming trio of reissues - I've been waiting for this forever as the original Cure CDs sound terrible. And hopefully "Charlotte Sometimes" won't sound like it was recorded in a paper bag like it does on SOAB/SATS.

I prefer Faith over any other Cure album. "Primary" might be their best ever single. I've always liked "Doubt" - don't know why everyone else hates it. It's the only song from this LP which has never been played live so I'm excited to hear the demo version on the reissue. "All Cats Are Grey" is my favourite Cure song, hands down. I'm thinking "The Violin Song" on the reissue must be an outtake of ACAG I've had in Nth generation form for years - quite nice.

I like Seventeen Seconds when I'm listening to it, but always think of it as being a little slight. I'm a little tired of "M," to be honest. The album sounds like a bright winter evening. Faith is like a foggy winter evening. Pornography is a raging snowstorm.

I'll take the fog.

Your (worthy) point just died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

That wasn't the point. What's ridiculous is seeing a thread about the Cure and using it to talk about how much you love Theolonious Monk.

I think the fact that I get this joke means I need to get out more.

It's like yer dad popping his head round your bedroom door when you were a teenager and complaining that 'Give Me It' was a tuneless racket, oh wait...

i think a disrespect for jazz is expressed here

Haha, given Stormy Davis's track record this week, I'm not so sure!

No, it's a disrespect for a certain strain of jazz fandom.

And here is where a palpable disrespect for Miccio is expressed.

I'm not saying Alex didn't start the cattiness

Uh, excuse me, but it was stormy who first started tossing terms like "pathetic" around at Cure fans (a typically passive bunch who apparently need a zealous Killing Joke fan to step in and defend them).

Well, not to be pedantic, but it's Edward Scissorhands who dressed like Robert Smith, not the other way around.

Incidentally, my argument has nothing to do with the merits of Thelonious Monk. Being a jazz musician, he really has no place in the debate about whether or not Seventeen Seconds by the Cure is "garbage" or not. There've been loads of threads wherein I've shown up and decried whatever album or artist it was being deified by saying something similar, but my comments were based purely on my disdain for that particular artist's music. But, you'd be hard pressed to find a thread wherein I'd pluck a name from AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT GENRE AND ERA OF MUSIC and cite that specifically as your better option. I wouldn't barge into a thread devoted to, say, D.C. Go-Go legends TroubleFunk and say "YOU LIKE THIS MISERABLIST JUNGLE BLEETING? YOU'RE ALL ZOMBIFIED LEMMINGS WITH WORRYINGLY LOOSE-FITTING PANTS! YOU SHOULD ALL GO AND LISTEN TO BIG SCIENCE BY LAURIE ANDERSON, `COS THAT'S WHAT REAL ADULTS LISTEN TO!

...because that would be ludicrously pretentious and entirely without merit.

Anthony and I have baggage? I don't think you'd need sturdier luggage than say a light, Springy pocket book to contain whatever issues the estimable Mr.Miccio and I have. I mean, in a nutshell (also a suitable means of carrying our issues), Anthony is a wildly informed, savvy guy about music -- but inexplicably champions indefensible (to my mind) crap like Limp Bizkit and Good Charlotte, thereby untying the albatross of credibility from his neck and liberating him from the burden of ever being taken especially seriously.

faith is my fav of the early doom

No he didn't. Just because bondage gear is by and large made out of leather, that doesn't mean that all leather garments are bondage gear.

come on people, may i remind to you the name of this forum? it's called i love music and not my music is better than yours. that guy upthread who started with monk should have just been ignored. in the old times someone saying things like that would have been brandmarked as a troll. feeding the troll is never a good idea.

can we come back to the cure and seventeen seconds? nobody has commented on my interpretation of the lyrics of a forest yet. what do you think is happening in the forest? is robert chasing a girl there which only existed in his mind? that's something much more instructive than stupid arguments if jazz or rock is superior.

here are the lyrics to help your memory:

A Forest
Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
If you can
Come closer and see
See into the dark
Just follow your eyes
Just follow your eyes

I hear her voice
Calling my name
The sound is deep
In the dark
I hear her voice
And start to run
Into the trees
Into the trees

Into the trees

Suddenly I stop
But I know it's too late
I'm lost in a forest
All alone
The girl was never there
It's always the same
I'm running towards nothing
Again and again and again and again

Where's the fun in that? C'mon, lure the troll out of his dank, musty, foul-smelling lair!

but, it's like, I've had to suffer through so many really interesting threads about people like Springsteen or Dylan or Mellencamp or the Rolling Stones or whoever, when people like Matt Cibula or Ally K or Amateurist or JF Mayshark and so forth are having a really great discussion, and then Ned barges in with his one-line inanities and derails the thread, that I figured turnabout was fair play. I promise never to post on a Cure thread again if Ned promises not to ruin interesting discussions about Springsteen or Dylan or the Rolling Stones or whoever with his one-line inanities. And anyway, this thread turned out pretty great! So I'm sort of glad I acted like a dick! i think it made for a good discussion. maybe? just as sometimes Ned's derailments can result in interesting tangents.

You'll note I've added nothing to that Springsteen thread in a long, long time, precisely because I reflected on points made by people whose opinions on him, like yours, differ from mine -- but folks like Ally and Matt I respect as thoughtful friends, who don't act as if only they've found the keys to the goddamn kingdom, and as if only their thoughts on what make good music have some kind of sole objective validity. Similarly Spencer and I have sparred over whether complaints on a 'classic or dud' thread are valid, and while I think they are and he agrees with me, I acknowledge and respect his views on the matter because he doesn't preface every goddamn conclusion of his with an openly stated or implied, "Well, since I've been to eight million shows and know how much time it takes to practice an instrument, that means only I can critique music and everyone else can step off unless they agree with me, because that shows my approach is the correct one."

You suffer from those flaws -- or alternately pretend it's a joke, squeal 'don't hurt me!' and then find another thread somewhere else to say the same thing over again. Complaining about my own repetitious weak spots is bullshit when you can't even acknowledge yours.

The status is quo. I haven't gotten to it yet. Sorry, I will. But, I didn't realize it was that pressing.

THANJYOU TEACHER O MIGHTY_See THOSE BUCKLES AND SNAPS AND STRAPS YES. COUNT TO !2. EXHALE> BREATHE> GOOD. NOT ALL BONDAGE IS COCK AND BALL TORTURE MASKS . ALSO< WHO CARES? GOOD NIGHT

I would love an album which combined the general songcraft of those albums with the arrangement approach of, say, The Teardrop Explodes.

Actually what I would love from The Cure would be a whole album of stuff like the Disintegration extended mixes on Mixed Up.

Sadly I suspect parts of Bloodflowers were an attempt to do exactly that and the album never grabbed me.

OTM Alex. And OTM re hearing the dance remix of "A Forest" first and the initial disappointment upon hearing the original.

I have the same issue with the Cure as I do with New Order: I prefer their happy stuff with big strummed basslines and goopy keyboards to the minor-key miserabilism. I'll take "The Head on the Door" over "Faith," not to mention "Seventeen Seconds."

The Top's wound up being just about the only Cure album I enjoy any more. Just a perfect album that displays nearly every side of Robert Smith's songwriting/moods and has some terrific music and lyrics too. I'd argue there's not a bum song on the record, but you guys might laugh me out of the thread... In my mind, there's too much filler on both 17 Secs and Faith, where they didn't really have enough songs to fill up the record, so they went "yeah let's just do that downtrodden, mopey one again, with different chords + lyrics"

not meant as a diss, as I'm a cure fan from way back, just sorta my grown up self looking back and re-evaluating my Cure back catalog

Ah well, I love Japanese Whispers a helluva lot too, so most of you won't even listen to me :)

The Top is a fucking outstanding album! "Shake Dog Shake", "Give Me It", "Bananafishbones", "Wailing Wall", "Piggy In The Mirror", etc etc etc WOW.

Parts of Wish are really terrific, but parts of it felt like they were really coasting, and after that it was all on cruise control... Just simply not interested at all. It felt gimmicky and overwrought, not in the ways I'd grown to love, but in a "oh my god I'm getting old and pigeonhoed into being a caricature of myself" kinda way. And these days it's just sad to watch.

But that doesn't take away the greatness of their earlier days. In any way.

Also I'm still completely obsessed with "Lost".

And wot Dan said re: The Cure. It's a great album!

Re: Thelonious Monk vs. The Cure. Anybody who wants to get between me and my Monk albums, or me and my Cure albums will not receive teh violent outburst that Alex in NYC might deliver but a cool, humane silencer-muffled kill-shot to the head 'cause nobody is going to make me choose between my pleasures.

that whole cure/siouxie era is psych-city. (not to mention the glove. i probably listen to that glove album more than monk. but not eric dolphy.)

i made a couple of mix cds of stuff from various Creatures singles, the Boomerang album, The Glove's Blue Sunshine album, The Top, Japanese Whispers, Hyaena, The Cult Heroes single + "The Hanging Garden" and a few other things (like "Carousel" from Peepshow) and it's one of the best discs ever.

?

"Mint Car" is one of my all-time favourite Cure singles, along with other pop moments such as "Let's Go To Bed", "Friday I'm In Love", "Just Like Heaven" and "A Night Like This".

You want David Balfe to produce a Cure record then. Maybe that's what Blur is!

The bridge to this song with the ascending guitar line is simplicity at its finest (outside of "Siamese Twins" and "All Cats Are Grey" and "Another Day", of course).

that has the honour of being the most OTM statement i have ever read on ILM.

Wow I was kind of angry on this thread.

keep forgetting how beautifully evocative this album, and more specifically In Your House, truly is (A Forest/M also pretty much perfection)

it truly is amazing how special this band is.

This really is a perfect album but the inclusion of "I'm a Cult Hero" and "I Dig You" on my copy is infuriating. Completely ruins the mood. Fucking hell... the live disc is great but fuck putting those songs on the main album.

Oh that would bug me too. Such a perfect album as it is. Even my favorite cure song, Charlotte Sometimes, wouldn't make the album better if it had been included.

But do you like the video for that one, brotherlovesdub?

I havent' seen the video for Charlotte Sometimes since I had a VHS player, but I remember liking it. Black and white, there's a girl and some type of stately manor w/ manicured gardens maybe? It wasn't one of my fav. cure vids, but I liked it I guess. I'll go to YouTube and revisit.

Just watched it again. I recalled the older woman's white dress, the ballerina music box and the scene in black and white with the unicorn head. It's an ok video but not great. Gonna go watch live recordings now.

Such a drag that they're at the end of the first side and not the second. Really destroys the momentum.