Day 99: The Cure - Seventeen Seconds
Album cover courtesy of Fiction Records
How goth is too goth? I think when you’re so goth that you’re against the beach, you’ve probably crossed some sort of a line. I saw clips of Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson crashing out on stage because someone brought a beach ball to an Australian daytime festival. She threatened to sic her fans and crew on him to beat him up, ranting “You're a fucking middle–aged man. In a fucking ridiculous hat. And you're a fucking fuck face. I literally want to fucking ask people to punch you in the fucking face … I would love to send my crew over to fuckin' mess you up.”
And this was over a beach ball. He didn’t even throw it on stage or anything, he was just in possession of one whilst jamming out. She wasn’t kidding either, she clearly meant every word. And mind you, she is 59 – at no age should you be inciting people to mob violence for enjoying beach accessories, but I would understand it if she was maybe 12. She doubled down by saying she’s not sorry afterwards:
“I joined a band because I HATED THE FUCKING BEACH. I joined a band because I wanted to listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure and be dark and beautiful.”
I mean we all want to listen to Siouxsie and the Banshees, there’s just no need to be such a massive dork about it. Anyway, in honour of the Garbage of the day, I thought I’d go for the Cure. I’m interested in knowing if they’re somehow much darker than the singles make them appear, because I think you could easily enjoy a nice day at the beach and also like listening to “Just like Heaven” or “The Lovecats” or really any number of their songs, but I could be wrong.
The Cure was formed in Crawley in 1976 by Robert Smith and his school friend Lol Tolhurst. They formed a group and played around Crawley until their demo found its way to a scout at Polydor, who signed them to Fiction – a label that was under Polydor at the time. Their debut single garnered a fair bit of controversy, as it was called "Killing an Arab". They had to put a sticker on the cover basically saying that they deny any racist connotations and they’ve just read a bit of Albert Camus.
The band’s debut wasn’t necessarily goth rock, it was more of a new wave record, but Robert Smith’s experience with touring with Siouxsie and the Banshees inspired him to take the music to a different direction and start to veer more towards the gothic. Their bassist decided to hit the bricks at this time, because he didn’t like the band’s direction, with Smith saying “He wanted us to be XTC part 2 and – if anything – I wanted us to be the Banshees part 2. So he left.”
Seventeen Seconds is the band’s second album, and it’s their first album where they’ve taken their new musical direction. It’s also supposed to be their darkest album, so I thought I’d go for that one just to see if it could make me want to abandon the beautiful Scottish beaches forevermore.
I’m not deep enough in the game to really be a wank about what version I’m listening to and where, but I have to say that I did start to enjoy the record more when I switched from the remastered version to the original. Something about that just didn’t sound good. It felt a little bit too loud and too sharp, I like the soft fuzziness of the original. So there was my first error.
My second one is that I didn’t listen to this when I was younger. I listened to the same greatest hits collection by the Cure that everyone else did at that age, but I didn’t get any deeper into it. I would have devoured this record when I was younger, I can just feel that this would have been something I’d been obsessed with. Right now, it’s good. I’m enjoying it, but I’m not going crazy for it.
Will I listen to Seventeen Seconds again? Possibly. It’s a decent album. I remember liking “A Forest” as a youngster, and I still do. “M” is another high point. There’s a slightly heavy, spooky air to the whole album that I do like. But it hasn’t changed my life — it might have when I was younger, but 30-something just might be a bit too long in the tooth to fully get into this sort of thing.
I like it, but do I like it enough to forgo sunny beaches for as long as I live? Obviously not. That would have to have been a very strong 10/10 and this one is a 7.5/10 for me. I think I’m more of a casual secret fan of darkwave than a goth girlie. The way I feel about goth rock is the same thing that I have with video games and religion: it’s a nice thing to enjoy by yourself sometimes, but don’t integrate yourself into the community. Or else you might get chastised for holding a beach ball.