I first heard the eerie notes of Seveneteen Seconds back in the winter of 1983...it was then I became hooked on The Cure. This album is so tight, so fresh, so well done, any music collection would be incomplete without it. The next two albums after this one- "Faith" and "Pornography"- are excellent albums (I have a review of "Pornography") but this one...this one just has that magical and mysterious sound that glows on a dark night. Perfect listening setting? A cold, late December night, a light snow falling, a slight breeze bringing the naked tree limbs to life. Just slap on the headphones and start walking. Before you know it, you're floating. One thing I have always loved about this CD is that it comes off so smooth...the music is so smooth and crisp it just slides through your ears.

Top tracks on "Seventeen Seconds"? The classic "A Forest", "In Your House", "The Final Sound", and of course "Play For Today". Every track is great, but if I had to pick'em, there they are.

There are some eerie sounds....dark lyrics...but there are also hints of the quirk-Cure too....it's just not as obvious....there are layers and layers for your musical being to explore. It's a treat for any music lover. "Seventeen Seconds" is one of the most intense and visually stimulating records ever made.

The Cure's second album "Seventeen Seconds" is atmospheric, sad and angry. When you listen to it you feel like you're in that photograph on the cover: an eerie land of echoes, isolation, and a feeling of blurred distance. A void in other words.

This album was made just as Robert Smith's writing was starting to explore the darker, cynical side of life. There's nothing chirpy about these songs. It's hard to believe the album was made 20 years ago. Everything was so much different back then. Space Invaders was two years old, computer graphics were primitive (yet exciting), I was in kindergarten, and Robert Smith was 21, with short hair and no make-up. If you've seen the film clips to their singles from this collection you will know that minimalism was everything to Smith.

The song I like best is "A Forest". For some reason I think of "Logan's Run" when I hear it. Probably because Smith was the same age as the character. Other songs I like are "A Refection", "In Your House" and "At Night".

In 1980 The Cure was one of the uncommercial, anti-image fringe bands. The word "mainstream" was not in their vocabulary at that time. I tend to think that a musician's early work is their best. This goes for "Seventeen seconds".

Minimalism at its best. Released in 1980, just after Three Imaginary Boys and Boys Don't Cry, one could argue that this is the first true Cure album. Its haunting melodies, eerie vocals and intense introspection were a sharp departure from the scattered and idiosyncratic punk/pop sound of the previous albums, and lay a firm foundation for the next two albums, Faith and Pornography.

The only real single from the album is "A Forest." A terrific song, whose heart-beat bass line finale has become a tradition at every Cure concert. Also worth noting are "Play for Today," and "M"--bitter, resentful and dramatic, as well as "In Your House," "At Night" and "Seventeen Seconds"--sparse, simple, and beautiful, the lonely rhythms will swallow you whole.

For new fans who liked Bloodflowers, this CD would be a great choice. As Robert defeatedly says in "A Forest," you will want to listen to this album "again and again and again and again...."

Three Imaginary Boys, the Cure's 1979 debut album, was something of a mish-mash of styles - mostly fast paced pop/punk music with an edge - and not really representative of where the band would head musically. By the end of the tour for TIB, the band's original bassist was let go and the Cure were readying themselves for the recording of Seventeen Seconds, which I see as the real debut of the Cure, as it is really where the Cure as we know them today begins. Split between atmsopheric instrumentals, and a few slower songs that are well doomed out, are two songs ( Play for Today and the classic A Forest ) that are a little more like TIB ( they both have a fast, clipped pace ) but show the real strengths of the band. Crisp production, spare arrangements, very simple one note keyboard lines, vocals dripping in deadpan irony, disgust, fear and loathing, doubt and crippling self awareness. Robert Smith's guitar playing is a stellar example of less is more. A classic album of the early eighties. WAIT FOR THE DELUXE RE-ISSUE COMING OUT LATE IN 2004 EARLY 2005 - IT WILL HAVE AN EXTRA CD OF BONUS TRACKS, DEMOS, LIVE CUTS, ETC.

This puts me in a world in my past..moody, intense and lonely. For those bitter moments when you need to share you mood with someone who isn't there. Contrary to the blind views of the mindless majority, music like this serves to uplift and raise the spirits, not depress. Try listening to current chart music if it's something you need to make you take up the razors...

SS999