Seventeen Seconds

History

At the end of their 1979 UK tour, Robert Smith spoke less and less with bassist Michael Dempsey; the Cure were, at the time, the support band for Siouxsie and the Banshees. An early version of "M" was performed at a few concerts, but Dempsey didn't like the new musical direction that Smith wanted to take. Smith commented: "I think the final straw came when I played Michael the demos for the next album and he hated them. He wanted us to be XTC part 2 and - if anything - I wanted us to be the Banshees part 2. So he left". The records that Smith were constantly listening during the composition of the album were Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake, Isle of Wight by Jimi Hendrix, Astral Weeks by Van Morrison and Low by David Bowie. Smith wrote the lyrics and music for most of the record at his parents' home, on a Hammond organ with a built-in tape recorder. Interviewed in 2004, producer Mike Hedges does not recall any demo tracks, with the band generally playing the track in the studio before laying down a backing track to which overdubs were added.

Two members of the Magazine Spies, bass guitarist Simon Gallup and keyboardist Matthieu Hartley, were added to the band's lineup. Gallup replaced Dempsey, which relieved Smith as he felt Dempsey's basslines were too ornate. Hartley's synth work added a new dimension to the band's newly ethereal sound, although Smith and he would later clash over complexity (Hartley enjoyed complex chords; Smith wanted single notes).

Due to budgetary restraints, the album was recorded and mixed in seven days on a budget of between £2,000 and £3,000, which resulted in the band working 16 or 17 hours a day to complete the album. Smith stated that as a result, the track "The Final Sound" was actually planned to be much longer, but was cut down to 53 seconds because the tape ran out while recording, and they couldn't record it again. The record, mostly a collection of downbeat tracks, features ambient echoing vocals and minimally treated instruments, with the album's sonic direction driven by its drum sound.

In the media, there was controversy concerning the band's "anti-image", established by the cover of Three Imaginary Boys, which this album contributed to by blurring the photos of the band's members and the cover art. This is the first Cure album that Smith was able to choose the art for.

Musical style

Retrospectively, Seventeen Seconds has been considered an early example of gothic rock. Its "gloomscapes" are considered to be "a sonic touchstone" for the forthcoming movement. The track "The Final Sound", is "so positively gothic you could almost be fooled into believing that it was lifted from the soundtrack of some Hammer horror gorefest". The album has also been described as new wave.

Release and reissue

Seventeen Seconds was released on 22 April 1980. It reached No. 20 on the British album charts. The record was repackaged in the US in 1981 (on the A&M label) with Faith as Happily Ever After, available as a double LP. In 2005, the album was remastered as part of Universal's Deluxe Edition series, featuring bonus live tracks and demos as well as studio material by Cult Hero, a group that featured Smith's postman Frank Bell as lead singer and which performed '70s-style rock along the lines of Easy Cure.

Reception and legacy

The album's songs are described by critics as featuring vague, often unsettling lyrics and "dark", spare minimalistic melodies. Some reviewers, like Nick Kent of NME, felt that Seventeen Seconds represented a far more mature Cure, who had come very far musically in less than one year. The album was lauded by some critics, and panned as a "collection of soundtracks" by others. Chris Westwood of Record Mirror described the album as "sad Cure, sitting in cold rooms, watching clocks".

In 2000, Q magazine placed Seventeen Seconds at No. 65 in its list of the 100 greatest British albums ever.

Seventeen Seconds was featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Robert Smith; all music composed by The Cure (Smith, Matthieu Hartley, Simon Gallup and Lol Tolhurst).

Note

Personnel

The Cure

Production