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THE REVIEW
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.
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Summary by Bot
Seventeen Seconds is The Cure’s third album and their first venture into dark, atmospheric soundscapes that would define their career. The album blends cold piano notes, synthetic drumming, hypnotic bass lines, and haunting guitar melodies. Tracks range from upbeat to deeply melancholic, creating a cohesive yet varied listening experience. The work is praised as a masterpiece and one of the band’s most representative albums.Tracklist Lyrics Videos
The Cure
The Cure are an English rock band formed in Crawley and led by singer-songwriter Robert Smith. Since the late 1970s they have moved between post-punk, gothic atmospheres and pop-oriented experiments, producing widely admired albums such as Disintegration and Pornography.89 Reviews
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.
