Yes, you! The one who looks delirious

On Fridays this year we ask...

( What's in the Box? )

Today in The Box we have:

The Cure - Seventeen Seconds

As I understand it, there are two legitimate ways of acquiring tapes. One is to pay money in emporia, the other is to forget to return borrowed cassettes to exes. I got Seventeen Seconds the latter way, and found it years later in my own tape collection.

Seventeen Seconds is probably in my top ten favourite albums, ever. It's short (just over 35 minutes), but has a beautiful, slightly melancholy sound throughout. The slow, measured piano-and-guitar introduction of Reflection is one of the most relaxing tracks I've ever heard; for some reason it always makes me think of rain.

For reference, the big singles from it were A Forest and Play For Today. Listening to it, however, the tracks don't stand out from one another. I tend to think of it as one 35-minute piece of music (or two shorter ones where you have to turn a tape over in between).

Against the bounce-a-bility of other and later works, it's easy to see why this gets forgotten but it deserves a wider audience.

The Cure - Secrets [link expired]

[Poll #1258473]

( Out of interest... )