Album of the day (#1923): Seventeen Seconds by The Cure

[albummaster]

Today's album of the day

Seventeen Seconds by The Cure (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1980.
Country:
Overall rank: 652
Average rating: 78/100 (from 294 votes).

Tracks:
1. A Reflection
2. Play for Today
3. Secrets
4. In Your House
5. Three
6. Final Sound
7. A Forest
8. M
9. At Night
10. Seventeen Seconds

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.

[HazeyTwilight]

I adore this album. Probably my favourite album by them - in the midst of an output in the 80s that is close to perfection. If I ever wanted to make a post-punk album, I want it to sound like this.
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[Norman Bates]

The Cure's best in my book too. Perfect capture of misty grey Sunday mronings in a suburban shithole, where you can still find some mystery to the daily boredom. The greyest album I've ever heard. Masterpiece.

[baystateoftheart]

What a great album! Currently a very close second to Disintegration in my estimation.
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Add me on RYM

[dihansse]

Certainly their best and part of my top 100

[undefined]

jumping on the "this is the best Cure" bandwagon. Fantastic stuff

[Grzywa]

Yes, sir. No. 1 Cure album.

It's interesting to see how they progressed from Three Imaginary Boys / Boys Don't Cry period so quickly. This record shows the transition from a-bit-late-for-punk band that loves Buzzcocks to a fully grown act, dark but enthralling.

It's rightly regarded as the first part of the "dark trilogy", but I personally rank it higher than Faith or Pornography. While it shares certain distinctive features with the latter two (gloom, obsessive riffs), it generally sounds different, it's more mechanical or even Neu/Kraftwerk-like at times (just listen to Three).

Some of the best basslines ever written are included on this record. Simple, yet efficient and accurate like razor cuts.

Play For Today, M, In Your House and obviously A Forest are highlights for me.
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Always shouts out something obscene

[FlorianJones]

For me Disintegration is just an absolutely next level album. Heads and shoulders above all other Cure albums, and a top ten of all time. But, of the rest of the Cure albums, which are a little closer in quality to each other, Seventeen Seconds is the best.
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Overall - The 2010's - 2020

[BrandonMiaow]

There is something to be said for its gentle greyness and I like it but I can't say I listen to it often. It doesn't really make so much of an impression on me. I prefer The Cure in their more driving intense moments, personally. Pornography obviously being exemplary of that but Faith also being an album full of those moments. This has none of that, really.

You know, bit off topic, but I've never really gotten Disintegration. Obviously like Love Song and a few other songs on there are really great but the album as a whole just sounds sooo thin and stretched. Like the aural equivalent of a watered down drink, I feel.