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?



Lew: “A Forest” does sound distinctly ‘80s to me. There are quite a few things that jump out at me and point directly to what I associate with the post-punk/new wave scene. For one thing, the sounds aren’t “warm.” I don’t think any era has used cold textures more expressively than the early ‘80s, and this song is a very vivid example of what can be done with them. To my ears, it sets The Cure squarely within an ‘80s aesthetic, on the basis of sonics alone. Even for artists that had done very forward-thinking work in the ‘60s and ‘70s – from The Beatles to David Bowie’s Berlin albums – the sonic goal seems to have been to capture a given instrument more successfully, using an established sonic palette as recording techniques and technology became increasingly refined (Brian Eno is admittedly a bit of an outlier here). By contrast, “A Forest” seems to actively avoid organic drum and guitar sounds, in the interest of creating a bleak, starker sensibility (which may account for the goth label).

I also think that the repetitive, driving quality of the guitar parts and rhythm section would have been fairly unusual for rock bands of the time. It seems to be generally referencing krautrock bands like NEU! – the drum pattern is only slightly removed from the “Motorik” beat – but with a tighter sense of purpose than I generally associate with the kraut rock movement. Again, it’s an early incarnation of something that you’d hear a lot more of in the music of the ‘80s.

Aaron: What’s fascinating to me is just how “distinctly ‘80s” (of a certain vein) this song sounds having been recorded and released in early 1980. Part of that comes, I think, from what the band does with those krautrock and art rock influences. Whereas, in a way, Joy Division and Bauhaus (quasi-proto-goth compatriots of The Cure) seem to have embraced krautrock and built upon it (as well as other notable influences, like The Velvet Underground), to my ears The Cure seem to taking some of the sounds and rhythms of those influences and pushing them, working against them, in some ways even subverting them. Smith’s voice has a lot to do with it – whereas Ian Curtis’s and Peter Murphy’s voices seem to replicate or mirror the droning bass and even some of the rhythmical cadences of krautrock, Robert Smith’s more melodic, maybe even lusher, approach to his vocal performances creates a more dynamic soundscape when juxtaposed against the stark music of the song. So that while Curtis and Murphy seem to replicate the “coldness” that you mention, Smith’s voice seems pitched against that coldness.

And yet, as layered as the song’s production is, the music does have that cold sound, and the band seems to have put everything at their disposal into creating the song’s interplay of calibrated coldness and textural depth. There are multiple tracks, lots of reverb, flanging throughout, and I think they might use an early type of gated drums as well. Reportedly, of the seven days they took to record Seventeen Seconds, they spent the most amount of time on “A Forest.” Under pressure to make the song more radio friendly, the band refused as they felt they’d really captured the song as they’d heard it in their heads. So it seems to be a case of a band very consciously evoking certain influences, but also reshaping those influences in a manner that would be massively influential for the indie sound of the 1980s. I don’t mean to discount the influence of Joy Division or Bauhaus, which has obviously been immense. But The Cure are doing something with “A Forest” that seems to me a bit more singular and maybe even more innovative, despite many of the superficial similarities.

Robert Smith, pre-goth, in the video for "A Forest"

Lew: Your observation about the juxtaposition of Robert Smith’s voice against the colder quality of the music in “A Forest” (and possibly The Cure in general) is dead-on. There’s a warm sensitivity in his style of singing, and the natural timbre of his voice, that’s very distinct from Peter Murphy or Ian Curtis (to extend the examples you used). Aside from his voice, the lyrics themselves seem to have a naturalist foundation, which place the listener in a more hopeful place than the cold isolation of Bauhaus or Joy Division, even if the landscape in question isn’t characterized as entirely hospitable. I think that’s part of what makes The Cure such a weird/interesting blend of sounds: While the music regularly veers between goth, pop and post-punk, Smith’s voice and lyrics bring a kind of damaged romanticism that rarely speaks to the urban alienation of post-punk, while also avoiding the superficiality of their New Romantic peers.

To say a little more about the production, I also think it’s interesting that while “A Forest” obviously doesn’t have a lot to do with hard rock, the way the guitars are arranged is pretty standard rock production. The rhythm guitars are doubled and panned to the left and right of the stereo field, with the chiming lead parts in the center - which, as I said, is all very common to hard rock production, except that it would be more common to hear distorted guitars in those stereo relationships, and not uncommon for a clean guitar part to be tracked only once, and kept close to the center of the mix. I don’t mean to suggest that “A Forest” is secretly a hard rock song, or that I’ve hit on something that wouldn’t be apparent to most people, but I still think it’s worth mentioning, because having clean rhythm guitars doubled and panned definitely increases the openness at the center of the mix (where the vocal sits), and also adds to the driving feel of the rhythm tracks. To my ears, the mix itself subverts (to borrow your term) the mechanical kraut rock influences into something that’s forecasting industrial, as much as referencing NEU!

Aaron: I’d most definitely like to make room for a discussion of the lyrics in this tune. I think I might disagree slightly with your comment about their potential hopefulness – perhaps “disagree” is not quite the right word. I do see them as being more open to interpretation as well as more “naturalistic” than some of the other music we’ve been comparing this song to, but I actually think they bring a third dynamic to the song that again works in tandem with the music and the singing, which works to add further layers to the song. Hopefully we can get back to that soon.

Ian Curtis

But if possible, I’d like to linger on the production a bit more. I really like the way you describe the “openness at the center of the mix” because I think it’s not only Smith’s vocals but also the lyrics that inhabit that openness. At the risk of hopping too far down the techie rabbit hole, could we say a bit more about that? What I’m really interested in with this song is the way that it feels “open” – which is another contrast to the music of their peers, which often feels (and has been described) as claustrophobic. For me this openness is the result of a few things, that I guess I can only best describe impressionistically, but maybe you could specify some of this stuff. For me, it starts with the gradual introduction of each of the instruments – which seems to establish a palette of layered sounds, each with its own distinct character (they keyboard/synth is quite spooky, the first guitar has a very ethereal vibe, the drums, even with the gating, are quite cold, etc.). I guess you’d say much of this is a reflection of the mixing process you’ve described above. Then there are the various sonic effects – the reverb, the flanging – etc. (which actually partially obscure the first snippet of lyrics, which don’t arrive until nearly two minutes of the song). So the song ends up establishing layers of different moods before the lyrics even kick in (which, in this sense, is very similar to things Joy Division was doing, albeit with different results). I guess a lot of bands had done this before – The Doors, even a group like Cream, The Grateful Dead – so I’m not trying to say The Cure were inventing something completely new. But their ability to do it so effectively within the context of what we’ve sort of agreed is a very nascent ‘80s production aesthetic is quite fascinating.

Lew: I like your description of the way the instruments build into the verse section of “A Forest” – it’s a well-composed introduction of each instrument. As you might have guessed, I think it’s particularly interesting to pay attention to the way the guitars (as the most carefully produced instrument) are mixed and panned into different places – it plays an important role in introducing each new dynamic level of the song, up until the vocals enter. When the guitar enters over the droning keyboard at the beginning of the song, it’s set in the center. However, as things rest for a moment, allowing the drum beat to begin, the guitar (playing the same theme as before) abruptly pans to the left of the mix, and remains there until the verse part becomes fully-formed, with a new part introduced and doubled on the right, and a third part (essentially a lead line), panned to the center.

We should probably say a few words about doubled and panned guitars to be more specific about why it’s worth mentioning. As I was saying in my previous response, while it’s not abnormal, it’s less common – or at least less necessary – to double and pan clean rhythm guitar parts. Panning a guitar hard to one side or the other is a technique that’s used most frequently with distorted guitar, in order to control its frequency absorbing tendencies by moving it out of the center, and away from the vocal, snare, bass, etc. Doubling distorted parts serves a dual function of ensuring that you get the same thing out of both speakers – creating a thicker wall of guitar – while still leaving your vocal alone. (For a great example of a mix that doesn’t do this, check out “Sunday Bloody Sunday” in headphones – distorted guitar that’s basically down the middle) By contrast, it’s less necessary to remove a clean guitar part from the vicinity of your vocal, because it’s less likely that the two tracks will compete for the same frequencies.

In “A Forest,” my sense is that doubling and panning the guitars allows the part to actually be further back in the mix, because it owns so much more real estate in the stereo field. It’s very present in the recording, despite being mixed fairly low. For me, the mix allows the guitar part, which, mixed differently could sound punk or metal, to remain somewhat atmospheric. In turn, the entire mix has a much starker feel than if the guitars were more overtly present.

Peter Murphy. And audience.

Aaron: So, basically, it seems like very conscious, specific decisions were made about the production of “A Forest” for the precise reason of creating its atmosphere. The production takes advantage of both older and more cutting edge technology and approaches in somewhat novel fashion. And the atmosphere that the band (and producer Mike Hedges) achieved is one that was really heralding a particular ‘80s vibe.

On top of this, sort of tying it all together, or at least providing some foundation, are the lead vocals and lyrics. I mentioned above that I wasn’t quite on the same page with you, Lew, about the song’s potential for hopefulness. Anything else you want to say about that or any other aspect of the lyrics?

Lew: Well, I guess the word “hopeful” might have been badly chosen, considering the way the lyrics conclude. What I should have said was that, for me at least, the setting that Smith seems to be describing is one that’s much more comforting, even in the context of the futility that he’s expressing toward the end of the song, than a bleaker urban landscape. While I can easily believe that the forest of the song is as much (or more) figurative than literal, it still seems to imply that, in the midst of sadness and isolation, the world is fertile and beautiful. Of course, as a child of the Maine woods, that may be a perspective that’s particular to me.

Aaron: As we’ve been working on this project, I’ve been checking out quite a few of the fan-made videos for “A Forest.” One of the reasons for this has been practical: the band’s original video, as cool as it is in spots, does not include the entire song. So I’ve been investigating which video(s) to post as part of this entry so that readers who might not have access to the original can have a listen. Why bring this up? Well, a great number of these fan videos can aptly be described as “gloomy.” So perhaps that has colored my response to the song’s lyrics somewhat.

The lyrics are quite vague, to be sure, describing their “vision” in broad brushstrokes. A forest, a girl, she calls out, she’s gone. He’s been “running towards nothing” . . . again. They also have an obviously dream-like quality to them (Robert Smith has variously admitted to and denied basing the song on one of his dreams). A few aspects make me shy away from a “hopeful” reading, even though, as you point out, the forest is a much more organic space than many of Smith’s contemporaries were writing about. First, the forest is described similarly to how one might describe a forest in a nightmare, or in the opening scenes of a horror movie – it’s dark, a word mentioned a few times. As the song opens, the listener is literally invited into the forest to look for the girl. But it almost comes across as a dare: “Find the girl / while you can.” Soon, the point of view changes and Smith is no longer inviting the listener into the forest, but is describing his own experience, an experience in which he’s lost: not only can he not find her, but “the girl was never there.” And, I as mentioned, he finds himself “running towards nothing,” and it’s the again and again and again’s that really seem to imply a sort of hopelessness to me. Especially when looked at in light of the lyrics directly preceding these in which he describes how all of this has happened before (again lending to the dream interpretation) and that every time he is alone.

Lew: I think your reference to a nightmare landscape is pretty accurate, and I think at this point, that we can agree that the word “hopeful” isn’t really apt. Actually, the vagueness of the lyrics combined with the overall effect of the music adds a feeling of dread, which I guess splits between the protagonist’s sense of futility at the end of the song, and a general sense of eeriness in the landscape itself. I imagine that anyone who’s been lost in the woods for even a short time or watched movies, from Deliverance to Cabin in the Woods, is pretty aware that a forest setting isn’t necessarily a safe place, and I think that Smith is evoking that sense of a vast unknown in which strange things might take place. However, I think that the nightmare quality also functions as a kind of escapism – there’s a fantastic quality to it, which I guess is why I don’t have the same sense of tension listening to this song that I feel when listening to, say, Joy Division.

Which, I guess leads me to a question: When you listen to “A Forest,” are you hearing the lyrics as metaphor – possibly to describe the protagonist’s experience of life – or as a more straightforward set of actions and visual images? Is it possible to separate those readings of the song or worthwhile to do so?

Aaron: Good question, and one that I reckon is likely to pop up again during this series. I’d say my first instinct would be the metaphorical. The lyrics are so ambiguous and have such a dreamlike quality – and are pretty sparse to top it off – that it’s hard on first listen to hear them as purely descriptive. On the other had, Smith has on occasion said things along the lines of, “it’s a song about a girl. And a forest.” I’m well aware that a song’s being based on a set of real events or its telling a story meant to be in some way mimetic does not require a full explanation via its lyrical content. So the lyrical ambiguity and the fantastical nature of elements like the “again and again and again and again” don’t require the song to be strictly metaphorical. Which means I guess I’d have to answer your second question by saying that it’s probably possible to separate the metaphoric and the literal here, but that the song allows the overlap and blending of the two is part of its power.

I guess, for me, it goes back to what we were discussing earlier in regards to the song’s production and the layers of sound (including the vocal sound). There’s a sort of (gulp) multivalent dialogism going on here – between various sounds, between instrument and vocal, and between lyrical meaning – that all adds up to create an environment that’s quite lush despite some of it’s harsher qualities. Perhaps that’s what makes “escapism” such an apt term for it. Which, I think you’re right: as dire as the singer’s circumstances seem to be, there’s much less a sense of being trapped in a hostile environment than there is in some of the grittier urban-landscape music of the group’s contemporaries.

Lew: Multivalent dialogism! That’s a great phrase that, while superficially a little opaque, I think really speaks to what works so well in “A Forest.” It’s a track where, by accident or design, the sonic, lyrical, and musical elements seem to reinforce each other. It’s a really strong statement, and I must say that I’m glad you reintroduced me to it.

Coming Next: we turn our attention away from '80s indie (for now), and flip to the other side of this series with a look at one of the leading bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement – Iron Maiden, the Paul Di'Anno years. Stay tuned!