The Cure - Seventeen Seconds

The Cure
Seventeen Seconds
(180g Vinyl) 
Release: 1985
Re-Release: 2005

Track Listing:

1. A Reflection
2. Play For Today
3. Secrets
4. In Your House
5. Three
6. The Final Sound
7. A Forest
8. M
9. At Night
10. Seventeen Seconds

More Info:
Seventeen Seconds marks the decisive turning point where The Cure abandoned the wiry, pop-leaning post-punk of Three Imaginary Boys to forge the austere, cavernous gothic rock that would define their legacy. Co-produced by Robert Smith and Mike Hedges at Morgan Studios in London on a shoestring budget, the record establishes the foundational blueprint for the band's celebrated dark trilogy alongside Faith and Pornography. The sonic architecture is famously skeletal and uncluttered, built on restraint and negative space. Simon Gallup makes his momentous debut on bass, anchoring every track with driving, melodic hooks treated with thick flanging, while Lol Tolhurst strips his drum setup down to dry, deadened snare thuds and mechanical, hi-hat-driven pulses largely scrubbed of cymbal wash. Over this rhythmic foundation, Robert Smith deploys his cheap Woolworths Top 20 guitar alongside clean Fender tones, sending spare, ice-cold arpeggios through Roland and Boss flanger and delay units. Keyboardist Matthieu Hartley weaves eerie, single-finger synthesizer lines into the arrangements, refusing to play full chords to preserve the music's bleak, linear clarity. From the claustrophobic dread of "A Reflection" and the iconic, motorik chase of "A Forest" to the introspective pulse of "Play for Today" and "In Your House," Seventeen Seconds sounds suspended in perpetual dawn mist, wrapping listeners in timeless, monochromatic melancholy.