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Rating: Before the immobility and decadent sacredness of "Faith" and before the agonizing ecstasy of "Pornography," the Cure with their third album dove into dark atmospheres for the first time crafting their first masterpiece and one of the most representative albums of their career.
The cold piano notes fill the instrumental "A Reflection" which opens the album before dissolving and giving way to the synthetic and mechanical sound of the drumming in "Play For Today", the least dark song of the whole album, its upbeat rhythm and Smith's chiming guitar blends perfectly with the keyboard notes, "Secrets" lives on almost recited whispers by Smith and melancholic bass lines that sink the atmosphere into gray mists, mist that thickens in "In Your House" supported by a monolithic bass line from Gallup and Robert's voice now in a trance.
The instrumental "Three" proceeds threateningly thanks to the gloomy synths by Hartley, when it almost reaches the point of exploding, it ends up flowing into "The Final Sound", another short and minimalist instrumental, the dreamlike and chilling sound of the synthesizers that open "A Forest" mixes with hypnotic guitar phrases, a cold drum emerges from nowhere and the sinister, shadowy guitar phrases follow it while a hypnotic bass line transports everything into a dark ride that could last forever in its wandering, dreamy, and sad progress. The next "M" is less intense and tempers the darker tones for a brief moment, even while carrying a melancholic vein typical of the Cure.
With "At Night", we fall back into the shadowy, gray atmosphere of the work with the cathartic voice of Smith and the sharp guitar sounds combined with keyboard distortions that create a perfect setting for the nocturnal visions of Smith and company, nocturnal visions that continue to live in the title track which closes the album with sparse and minimal sounds and catapults everything into an almost immobile trance built on echoes and suggested sounds, the same ones that fill the work in each of its murky passages.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Play for Today (03:41)
It's not a case of doing what's right
It's just the way I feel that matters
Tell me I'm wrong
I don't really care
It's not a case of share and share alike
I take what I require
I don't understand...
You say it's not fair
You expect me to act
Like a lover
Consider my moves
And deserve the reward
To hold you in my arms
And wait...
For something to happen
It's not a case of telling the truth
Some lines just fit the situation
You call me a liar
You would anyway
It's not a case of aiming to please
You know you're always crying
It's just your part
In the play for today
03 Secrets (03:20)
Secrets
Share with another girl
Talking all night in a room
All night
Everything slowing down
I wish I was yours...
Strangers
Nobody knows we love
I catch your eyes in the dark
One look relives the memory
Remember me
The way I used to be
04 In Your House (04:07)
I play at night in your house
I live another life
Pretending to swim
In your house
I change the time in your house
The hours I take
Go so slow...
I hear no sound in your house
Silence
In the empty rooms
I drown at night in your house
Pretending to swim
Pretending to swim
07 A Forest (05:55)
Come closer and see
See into the trees
Find the girl
While 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
10 Seventeen Seconds (03:59)
Time slips away
And the light begins to fade
And everything is quiet now
Feeling is gone
And the picture disappears
And everything is cold now
The dream had to end
The wish never came true
And the girl
Starts to sing
Seventeen seconds
A measure of life
Seventeen seconds
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Other reviews
By StefanoHab
"The Cure's third studio album is probably one of the most important in their intense career."
"'A Forest'... truly manage to evoke in the listener the sensation of finding oneself in the dark in a forest, alone and disoriented."
By Mariaelena
‘Seventeen Seconds’ is the most fertile masterpiece of morbid and paranoid sanguine vision of a perverse yet true and transcendental love.
Robert shaper of the very and absolute Self, this is the story of the true love of ‘Seventeen Seconds’ that will soon continue with Faith.
