The Cure – Seventeen Seconds

Just came here to write how fu#king amazing this pressing sounds.

Tip: a cheaper alternative to the first UK cut pressings is The Netherlands first pressings. My Dutch copy bears the "STRAWBERRY" stamp in the dead wax, which means the first UK lacquer cuts were used for this. The "1Y", etc. matrices just mean that it was pressed in The Netherlands.

Is this the version supposed to be the 1st print?

Mines the FIX 004 version first press, my copy is NM/VG+ and it sounds incredible.

A masterpiece of an album, maybe the best The Cure album ever.

While certainly not a defining album, Seventeen Seconds comes off as an odd but subtle release, and while yes, the Cure have done far better work, with the album holding the majestic “A Forest,” (a nearly perfect song) one can easily hear the Cure moving into their own realm, with that single track being one of the reasons the band continue to remain on listeners’ radar.

Without a doubt, the music here is cold and distant, yet for the most part streamlined, tightened by pulse driven and hypnotic rhythms, where a new kind of distorted disoriented melancholy is entirely pervasive throughout each track, making them the standard bearers for the new gothic angst manifestations sweeping the UK at the time. Yet with all that being said, Seventeen Seconds is nearly abstract and spacious, certainly a bit creepy, in much the same manner as David Bowie’s Low, where the Cure were dead set on creating an aesthetic experience, more than anything else. Others have told me that the album was deliberately more cohesive, though that aspect only made sense to me in that all the songs sounded the same, to be more or less presented as if they were moving down the same dark shadowy path. Yet still, the record is filled with different and differing lyrics, different tempos, unexpected guitar melodies, along with incorporating differing bass patterns and lines that oddly get interwoven in a starkly juxtaposed manner … that works.

If anything sincerely stood out for me, it was that the Cure appeared to be trying a tad too hard, as if they were attempting to prove that they were Goth, that they were shrouded in a depressive mystery I could never fathom … though that only poses the question, “Who would wish to swim these dark waters and expect to survive?” As emancipated and catchy as the record was then, I don’t think that it quite holds up today in the same manner, as the Cure have by now (2020) far outstepped their expectations.

*** The Fun Facts: As to the album art, Smith once said, “The cover of the second album corresponds with the music. During the Banshees-tour I had a camera with me. I took pictures and after they were developed one of them showed a row of trees, but the camera had moved while the picture was taken. It was an accident, but it gave a very beautiful image.”

Review by Jenell Kesler

played again last night - still my fave Cure album and a definite Desert Island Disc, even after 40years, top top wax

I have what appears to be a copy of this signed by the band on the back (the signatures are above the blurred photos).Hard to authenticate as I bought it in a second hand shop, but after doing some comparisons they look pretty genuine.

It is a starless night and it is cold, im wearing heavy long clothes to protect myself.
I have been walking through unknown lands without feeling tired but with a strange hunger to meet something that makes my imagination travel at the edge of my mind, which is somehow connected to the edge of a universe that gives birth to another universe.There, there is a distant horizontal line that separates an imaginary land, or sea, both of these are charcoal colored and there are some very pale spots that could be dying stars, or stars that were just born, i really cannot tell the difference.Some kind of blue light seems to want to rise towards this sky.
This image somehow tortures me because i think that it is something to give me an answer for something eternal or it is something to think just for fun.
I stopped here at the side of this road, under a big tree, it's branches reach inside a yard of a strange house that looks like a small mansion, the fence is just plants, there is nothing to keep me from exploring, but i dont explore, i just sit here looking and observing, the black interior of the rooms, the strange white light coming from the base of the house.The atmosphere resembles Dario Argento films, but without the colored lights, is this possible?
The residence is talking to me, through the spirits that inhabit the rooms, the attic, the damp basement.They are not ghosts because they can leave this forgotten building but for some unkown reason they choose to wander pointlessly in there, dreaming, and sometimes raging at each other.
There is a vast forest around this mansion, i was wandering inbetween the trees without a sense of time, or day and night.
Lots of strange creatures were observing me, without being able to even conceive a single thought about the reason of my presence there.I was trying so hard to remain expressionless so that i would not fall asleep for all eternity, i knew that i should obey to this rule while wandering inside this tranquil forest.
So here i am now, at the side of the road, with my thoughts somewhere between darkness and light, between nothing and everything, between...

I turn my head on the left to look at the rest of the dream and...

My version is almost identical except for the side 2 run-out which ends in STR 14 9