Track #14: "A Forest" by The Cure (1980)

Welcome to Track Chatter, where with each post we choose a different song to discuss in depth. This entry is part of an ongoing series in which we approach the 1980s through examinations of Heavy Metal and Indie music.

Aaron: Seventeen Seconds, The Cure’s second album, was released in April of 1980. It’s safe to say that I had no clue about the album’s release or the band itself. Looking back, I’d like to think my favorite song of 1980 was AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” but if I’m honest it was probably something like “Take it on the Run” by REO Speedwagon. What can I say, I was young! Nobody I knew listened to The Cure in 1980, none of my friends knew who they were. And it’s pretty likely that very few people in the US knew the band. In the UK, while the band’s early releases couldn’t be considered break-out smashes, the albums did fairly well in the swirling, heady post-punk days when the likes of Goth, New Wave, and New Romantic hadn’t yet ossified into generic convention. Seventeen Seconds reached number 20 on the UK album charts.

It might be worth pointing out that April of 1980 was really only barely the 1980s – so many signifiers of the decade had yet to fall into place. In the US Ronald Reagan was not yet president and in the UK Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister for under a year. E.T. was still two years away, Top Gun six, and MTV wouldn’t debut until the following summer. Pacman was still six months from landing on US shores, and the world had two and a half years to wait for Thriller.

Into this era of transition, The Cure released their second album, approximately a year after their debut, Three Imaginary Boys (which would be renamed Boys Don’t Cry for its US release in early 1980). Seventeen Seconds is often considered the first of The Cure’s “goth” albums – a label front man Robert Smith regularly resists. While the album features drones, spooky sound effects, and some lyrics heavy on gloom and sadness, all hallmarks of goth, it also includes elements of ambient music, shoe gaze, and a sort of Romanticism evoked by Smith’s highly expressive voice.


We've posted the above rather than the original video (which can be found here) because it includes the entirety of the song.

Had I heard this entry’s track for discussion, “A Forest,” in 1980, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have known what to think of it – stupid? boring? – I don’t know. Certainly not for me. Yet listening to it now, one can hear how incredibly influential the sound of early Cure music would become to indie bands from the 1980s and beyond.

Lew, listening to the song in its historical context, it sounds to me like something almost completely new. What do you think? Does “A Forest” sound distinctly ‘80s to you? Can you hear the music to come, or does the song still have a 1970s vibe to it?

The Beatles - Some Final Thoughts

Welcome to Track Chatter, where we choose a different song to discuss in depth. This entry is part of an ongoing series in which we reconsider songs by The Beatles. Can anything new be said about this band or its music? Have a look below and let us know what you think.

Aaron: Well, Lew, we’ve done it. It took longer than I thought it would. Our first post on The Beatles came almost exactly two years ago, and since then we’ve written about sixteen Beatles tracks. Did you think it would take that long?

Lew: I definitely did not expect or plan for it to take this long! There’s a John Lennon quote (which you may know) that goes, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” – seems pretty appropriate here. I have to admit, I’m feeling a little conflicted now that we’re actually finishing it. I was looking forward to moving on to other topics, but I also feel weirdly like I’m going to miss talking about The Beatles. Maybe this is a loaded question, but how do you feel about seeing the end of this project?

Aaron: I’m a bit conflicted as well. When we first started the project, I sort of thought we’d burn through it in a few months, maybe 6 to 8 or so, and I was really excited. And while we were working on those first few entries, I got a real rush going back and listening to those older albums in full – it had been along time since I’d listened to all of Please Please Me or A Hard Day’s Night, for example – and in most cases, I was listening to the mono re-masters. That meant that in addition to hearing a lot of the songs again for the first time, I was hearing them in ways I hadn’t before, which was incredibly exciting. I think that sense of excitement comes out in those early entries in the way we write about something like the sound of Paul’s bass or the harmonies.

But as time passed and “life happened,” I sort of started to feel like perhaps we’d been a bit too ambitious. So I got worried we’d never finish and I found myself sort of wishing we’d started with a smaller project so that the pressure to do it all wouldn’t have seemed so immense.

However, now that it’s coming to an end, I do feel a bit wistful. I’ve so enjoyed the intensity of listening to each of these albums in preparation for each entry that I’ll be sad to see that go. However, I really do feel like my appreciation for The Beatles has not only intensified, but also that it’s a lot more grounded now. In that sense, I’m really excited about the conversations we’ve had.

How about you? Did the project change the way you listen to the band at all?