The Cure - Seventeen Seconds (1980)

Please don't be more standard 80s music. Please tell me there was something more to the decade. I'm sure I already know quite a bit by The Cure. They were pretty big in the 80s and I'm sure showed up on many a soundtrack. Per usual the hits just aren't coming to mind.

The album opens up with a short haunting guitar instrumental that just kind of exists. "Play For Today" follows, and minus the quintessential 80s-ness of the recording (the reverb, the jangle, the constipated whining of the lead vocalist) the song has good energy and solid hook. "Secrets" follows and feels like an appropriately desperate coda, but perplexingly the vocals are extremely low in the mix. This turns the song into a 2-chord simplistic instrumental. "In Your House" is next, and is again somewhat sad and desperate, but this time features a much slower beat. I had hope that this album might keep up the energy being from the 80s and all. Things have been pretty dour so far.

The fifth song is called "Three", maybe a Monty Python reference? I can't really think of a better reason for such a name, since the song essentially has no lyrics. There is certainly someone speaking in the background of this dark and pointless instrumental, but again he is so low in the mix I can't understand him. "The Final Sound" is hopefully as dark as this album will get. It's a short piece played on a piano that doesn't really fade out as it does crap out.

If this were on vinyl I'd have to guess I've made it to side 2 with "A Forrest". The opening reminds me of background music from Half-Life 2, which only makes me want to turn this crud off and go play that game. I have a feeling I'm going to wind up repeating a lot of what I've already said, so maybe I should just let the rest of the album play in silence.

I was kinda shocked how devoid of lyrics Seventeen Seconds actually is. I'm not big on lyrics in the first place, but Seventeen Seconds was mostly weightless instrumentals that followed dark themes. It probably would have helped keep me awake for the short runtime if someone were actually adding something on top of the banal guitar riffs. 2 stars.