I'm running towards nothing: The Cure - Seventeen Seconds poll

I love this album. I know it's probably the boring option but I think I'd have to go with A Forest. M would be a close second though.

i bought the remastered version of this but have yet to play it. i wanted to rectify that and do a poll while i'm at it. i know what i'm voting for but will wait and see if something else becomes my favorite this time around.

In Your House. Incredible, incredible song. Even better than A Forest, which will semi-deservedly win this by a furlong.

Another vote for "A Forest."

Pretty much every song on here aside from "Seventeen Seconds" itself is genius.

Seriously, turn down the lights and play "Secrets," "M" and "At Night" and you will be startled by how fantastic they are.

Love this record. hard pushed to choose, maybe 'In Your House' best version of which is on the Curiosities cassette.

"A Reflection" is easily the most bad ass of the instrumentals.

Also, love the peculiar production, all the strange near-quiet background stuff, dry as a bone, weird weedy backwards drum, evil delayed piano, the way The Final Sound tape edits into A Forest, the teeny tiny vocal sound on Three.

It really is a batshit record production-wise

31 years old? god I bought this on import when it came out.

just listened to it last week - perfect winter music. brilliant from start to finish.

what DJP says basically - it would never occur to me to describe "A Reflection" as badass but yeah OTM

am listening to this right now i'th' sepulchral gloaming

yeah it's awesome, the production is both nostalgic and timeless; the whole thing has been meticulously detailed to sound like alienation, and the brain counters this by zooming off to imaginationland where the music suddenly does a 180 into psychedelic fields of supposition - lends itself beautifully to lucid dreaming

'a reflection' is totally made by the background production touches

wd describe this record as 'gnostic'

31 years old? god I bought this on import when it came out
Ha. Me too. I remember going down to Eighth Street and having to wait or the stores to open.

for

Love this album. Only have it on vinyl and I cant bring myself to get mp3/cd version of it and ruin my aural memory of how warm and gloomy it sounds on record. "A Forest" for me, simply for those wonderful synth pad chords under the "again and again and again" part. They slay me.

Damn, Im gonna have to hook up the turntable and play this when I get home.

btw great as this is, the next 3 albums are even better - they're not as eerie or quietly baleful as this but they're more devastating and transporting - they're full-on technicolour assaults on consciousness - like as if this is the walk into the woods (i.e. the mood is still partially what you put into it) and then Faith and Pornography are what happens there (and The Top is the afterlife you're sent to after R Smith watches you drown in the shower)

It is quite good. I think I underrate it.

chalk up a vote for M. obsessed over it as a lonesome 17 year old.

So,so good and such a tough choice - in the end went for Play for Today, tho it could be pretty much any of them. NZ band Beat Rhythm Fashion ripped this sound & feel to excellent effect too

Probably for a consistent sound/mood/feeling my favourite Cure album, v much songs that are meant to be listened to together. Between 'In Your House', 'Three', or 'At Night'. In fact thinking about it probably my favourite production on an album ever. Will need a few hours/days to mull this over but gosh what a record!

Pretty much every song on here aside from "Seventeen Seconds" itself is genius.

― Indolence Mission (DJP), Wednesday, February 9, 2011 8:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

going with "At Night"

Another vote for "In Your House", one of the best Smith exercises in dream evocation.
I read somewhere a contemporary review that made comparisons with Eno's "Another Green World" -not completely off the mark, I think.

A Forest and Play For Today are amazing (the former being my favourite Cure song) but they have lives outside the album and it feels weird to vote for the hits from a record as atmospherically consistent as this. So In Your House then.

Because I think of Faith as such an immaculately produced record, I think I underrate the sound of this one.

After much deliberation I am opting for In Your House.

(fwiw I would say "Seventeen Seconds" is very good, but the whole slow build/slow wind down thing hurts its momentum when compared to the rest of the album, especially "A Forest" which does the same type of thing much more adeptly)

I definitely underrate this album.

voted "play for today" -- all-time top 2-3 cure song -- but the whole album's a brilliant if hushed trip into the ether

Maybe we all do! (After relistening to it last night based on this, I definitely had.)

I've been listening to this on vinyl recently, bringing back many old memories. It really is an excellent album. Over the years I've had so many favorites from this album but for the last several years I find that I listen to 'Play for Today' more than any of the others. As a kid, the most iconic thing about this album (I was too green to appreciate the production) oddly enough was the bass twiddle at the end of 'A Forest'. To this day it gives me an inexplicable thrill.

think I'll cast a lonely vote for Secrets

I definitely underrate this album.

I'm actually not much of a Cure fan OUTSIDE of this album, but this one is just so perfectly performed and produced. It's got sort of a Young Marble Giants atmosphere, I think, and like that one it's almost impossible to pick out just one song. If pressed, though, this:

A Forest. M would be a close second though.

Points for every track with the Synare.

"A Forest" Ftw. A great album overall, but "A Forest" is still in a league of its own, as being the pinnacle of early Cure.

I'm actually not much of a Cure fan OUTSIDE of this album

"Faith" is stylistically very similar, but I consider it to be even better.

poll it so I can vote for The Drowning Man plz

I voted for M, it has one of my favourite intro's to a song ever.

This is my second favourite Cure album behind Disintegration and just ahead of Faith.

am beginning to think this might be better than Faith, actually

Faith has 4 out of this world tracks compared to 17S' 2/3 but it doesn't flow nearly so well (midsection aside, my god)

I'm with Kitchen Person. This is my 2nd fav behind Disintegration. I had a cassette where I put Seventeen Seconds on one side and Faith on the other. Perfect to just keep flipping. I think they both fit on one cd now. Definitely better than Faith as an album but I like to play them together. I voted Play For Today so it gets at least one vote.

Pornography, I must add, has 8 (count 'em) out of this world tracks and The Top has like 7

Problem with Faith is doubt sucks balls.

so much so that I refuse to capitalise it

I like "Doubt," though it is out of place. Notably it's the only song from the album they didn't play live at the time.

cause it sucks balls

I mean they even did Splintered In Her Head

my favorite album for a large chunk of my life. Voting "Play For Today"

I always think of 17s as a few songs plus lots of instrumental interludes - probably because I pretty much knew all of the "songs" before I got it (from Standing on a Beach and Concert/Curiosity I guess), so I was never that interested in it as an album.

Same here. Faith and Pornography are much more obviously substantial, consistent albums, but I now realise was wrong and would like to make a formal apology to Seventeen Seconds.

"I mean they even did Splintered In Her Head"

Splintered is one of my favourite Cure songs from this era!

Listening again I may have to vote for 'Play For Today' just for the sound of that first 3 seconds alone, disregarding that the rest of the song is great anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E1yKsEgGKc

couple of things about In Orange.

A. WTF does Robert Smith say before and after every song? I wish I knew.
B. Mosh pit?

Ahh man Cure In Orange. I haven't watched that for like 20 years, but still till this day whenever I hear 'Charlotte Sometimes' my mind fills in the "ggnhh chkkk gnhhh chkkk Charlotte Sometimes" of Robert's intro, at least that's what I remember it as.

doubt sucks balls.

WRONG

Yes! That's exactly the intro to Charlotte Sometimes.

SUCKS BALLS

Robert in between EVERY song ever in concert:

"Thank you!"

*tuning up noises*

"(utterly incomprehensible or inexplicable little reference)...this song is called "(Song Title).""

Lather, rinse, repeat.

While my vote for "A Forest" stills tands solid, I'd like to throw in a word for "Secrets", "In Your House" and "M". And of course "Play For Today" as well. Sure, this is a great album!

Haha I visited the amphitheater in Orange a couple of years ago. I felt like I just stumbled into the bat cave or something

Hello I was at a bar tonight with my bestest buddies for a friends birthday and at one point "Play for Today" came over the stereo and I remembered this thread and I was verily amused.

this still sounds amazing today, the remastered version of this really makes it come alive. going to vote for "At Night" for this poll.

Trayce's world of goth birthday parties

haha.

From the remastered version:

On May 3, 1980 Seventeen Seconds entered the U.K. Album chart, where it would peak at No. 20, a markedly better showing than their debut album. Looking back now, Smith says, "I've always thought of Seventeen Seconds as out 'Opening' album. It was the first record I felt was really The Cure."

can't believe I still haven't picked up the remastered edition of this

"Album chart, where it would peak at No. 20"

Pretty incredible by today's standards that an album like this could enter the Top 20.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

voted M

hard to beat A Forest

This might have been a very interesting poll had it not been for "A Forest" being on that album.

"A Forest" is kind of ruined for me for the totally silly personal reason of the phrase "just follow your eyes" always reminding me of
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WnCJlq_kUA8/SBLHOM104LI/AAAAAAAAJOY/xfG0u-IVgOA/s200/toucan_sam.jpg

I mean I still love it but there are those five seconds where every time I think fucking toucan.

lol

abbott come on aim - I have q for u

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Woah, not the result I expected! Cool.

Robert in between EVERY song ever in concert:

"Thank you!"

I think you mean "'chyoo!"

I stand corrected.

When profoundly moved, occasionally he can exhibit the depth of his sentiment with "fan KYEW!" but this is a rare bird

correct winner imo, but this is just sad/embarrassing, what a great track this is!!

10. Seventeen Seconds 0

Missed the poll, but would have voted "M", one of my all-time favorite Cure songs.

aw, I knew I should have voted for "A Reflection"