Rocktrospectiva: The Mature And Minimalistic "Seventeen Seconds" Turns 45

 

Released on 18 April 1980 "Seventeen Seconds" was the second studio album by English rock band the Cure, The album marked the first time frontman Robert Smith co-produced with Mike Hedges. After the departure of original bassist Michael Dempsey, Simon Gallup became an official member along with keyboardist Matthieu Hartley. The album spawned the single "A Forest" which was the band's first entry in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart.  

At the end of the Cure's 1979 UK tour supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees, Robert Smith spoke less and less with bassist Michael Dempsey. Early versions of "Play for Today" and "M" had been performed at a few concerts, but Dempsey did not 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". For certain reasons, Smith would go on to say that "Seventeen Seconds was the most personal record that we’ve ever done, strangely enough".

Playing guitar with the Banshees for two months and learning their songs opened up another horizon to Smith. "It allowed me to think beyond what we were doing. I wanted to have a band that does what Steven Severin and Budgie do, where they just get a bassline and the drum part and Siouxsie wails".

Smith was also particularly influenced by Nick Drake, Pink Floyd, and Captain Beefheart at the time. So 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 did 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 he would later clash with Smith over complexity; Hartley enjoyed complex chords but Smith wanted single notes.

Money was short, so 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. Smith stated that as a result, the track "The Final Sound", which was planned to be much longer, was cut down to 53 seconds because the tape ran out while recording and the band could not record it again. The album, mostly a collection of downbeat tracks, features ambient echoing vocals with the sonic direction driven by its drum sound.

The album has been considered an early example of gothic rock. Its "gloomscapes" are considered to be "a sonic touchstone" for the forthcoming movement. The album has also been described as new wave and post-punk

The critics called the album as a vague of unsettling lyrics and dark, spare, minimalistic melodies, on the other hand, some critics thought the album as a far more mature Cure sound creating more ambitious music, while still retaining their "powerful melodic intensity", also it nonetheless represented an important development for the Cure, capturing them becoming "more rigid in sound, and more disciplined in attitude", and anticipating the bleak lyrical themes that would become more apparent on subsequent Cure albums. 

 

Seventeen Seconds Track List:  

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