Existential meditations on the passing of time, eerie guitar sounds, Simon Gallup’s crisp bass lines coated in hazy synths and piano passages that sound as if they were played by ghosts in a haunted house. In a clear departure from the still somewhat punk-rocky vibe of their debut, Seventeen Seconds slowly arrives at the kind of sound The Cure eventually became famous.
One that combines the dire and despair of human experience with a pinch of cheeky playfulness. Even though people associate them with all things dark and bleak, they are at the same time a cheerful band, in a wonderfully bizarre way. That undoubtedly has got to do with some of the biggest hits they went on to produce and the aesthetics they adapted as a means of sticking a middle finger in the faces of everyone who pigeon-holed them as gruff and drab. But if you have the advantage of knowing what will come, you can foresee some of that in their earlier work already.
“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.” [Play for Today] - The Cure
"Again and again and again and again and again" - A Forest (The Cure)