1980@40: SEVENTEEN SECONDS - THE CURE

An undercurrent of synthesised rhythm is squashed by a piano moving through a slightly eastern flavoured motif. It's short and repeated, broken only by a flanged guitar butting in. Eventually, a distant whining appears. It could be a human cry, an animal or an instrument. The piece ends with what sometimes sounds like muttered speech but on examination is the tail end of that synth rhythm decaying through an echo. It's called A Reflection. That might be a thought, what you see in a mirror or a puddle, or repetition like echo.

A brisk rhythm track with a bright clean guitar figure pealing above like a surf tune. Smith comes in with his signature crying tone. So far it could be from the debut album but the instrumental passages reveal that the view of the arrangement of a recorded song has risen to avian level; the songs have moved more into the realm of scoring rather than just cherry picking from jams and putting that together. Even if that was what happened it doesn't sound like it, it sounds arranged. Along with their mates from Bromley, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure at their best would follow this, adding a strong sense of cinema to their records. The lyric is the kind of self-gravitating vacuum of teenage relationships. The title and final line are taken from a U.K. tv institution Play for Today which typically dramatised stories from the lower end of the social strata in a kitchen sink style. I'd see them now and then in the '70s and loved how stark and often defiantly anti-enjoyable they were. Here, it's both sincere and ironic.

Secrets begins with the palm-muted flanged guitar and bass so close in tone that they frequently intersect. The chugging persists beneath a lyric of longing for an exhausted affair sung both in a distant reverby wail and a close up and dry murmur. Two brief verses of impressions and the  obsession chugs on. This approach in the instrumental track would speak for most of the band's output for the next four or so years when they broke out of it. But for now the pattern that could be used cheaply to evoke early '80s post punk lived here.

In Your House doctors the formula to an arpeggio on the (still flanged) guitar against a forward moving but groovy rhythm section. Robert Smith's vocal is again buried to allow the ambience to prevail. He tells of moving around the second person's house, changing the time and pretending to swim while drowning. Is he a ghost or does he just feel like one? The drums play out, machine-like, until the end.

You can find transcriptions of what Robert Smith is saying at various places online but until someone did that all you could tell was that someone was talking. It sounded like they were relating something like an event but it was too difficult to say. A tinkling piano playing octaves through a delay. The distant speech. a few guitar slices. A drum machine or a drummer playing kick+snare without variation. Wormy, squiggling sounds on a guitar low in the mix and the constant motif of tonic+semitone up+tonic+semitone down repeats before it falls into a rapid kickdrum decaying through an echo. The foreground tells you to worry and you do because you will never understand what the witness is saying. Minimalist mystery theatre.

The Final Sound opens the old side two with a waltz-time figure on the piano that sounds like a derelict house before the tape itself screws up and it stops.

When the dark harsh synth riff emerges from the shadows and the chorused guitar riff picks out an unresolved figure we are entering classic territory. The band already had a few songs well enough known to even peripheral fans to render them singalongs (my brother at the time delighted more than anyone else around him in singing "burn like a tyre in Cardwell") but A Forest was the epic that sealed it.  The drum machine starts with the basic kick and snare tone augmented by a kind of hi hat whisper. The bass fortifies the synth figure and the guitar chug emerges from the riff. Smith again comes in low in the mix. A verse about seeing a girl or not gives way to a change in the guitar chug tonality over the constant of the bass and synth. Another verse. Same. The final verse sings the frustration of a dream where you are denied what you want until you wake up and want to get back into the dream. "Again and again and again and again..." A new guitar figure soars until the drums and bass pare down to a heartbeat. The guitar lifts ever higher  but fragments (never had modulation effects been so expressive) and dissipates into the dark. One last progression by the bass and it, too, falls and rolls away into an echo.

M surprises by sounding like a brighter throwback to the first album, a pacey two chord riff on acoustic guitars and a straightforward 4/4 push. As a film buff I always thought this was about the Fritz Lang proto noir but M stands for Smith's beloved Mary, eventual wife. Still, if a love song it's happy with its spot in the shadows as the obscure lyric both admires and fears the subject who attracts him but daunts him with powers he doesn't understand. In other words, while not conventionally romantic it's an accurate description of the thoughts of someone in love. It's not all sunshine and kisses, folks, it can be paranoia, anxiety and despair as well: sometimes they just all feel the same.

At night begins with a spacey drum sound and distorted bass that sound like Joy Division's first album are augmented with a sax-like keyboard figure that removes that impression. Smith's distant vocals have a Latin descent to them. At the end of the verses the same ascending two chord riff is joined by a chorused guitar. The second verse gets an extra fuzz bass even further into the foreground. And the lyrics; is he a stalker? He stands alone in the icy night while someone else sleeps in a safe bed. He suggests that someone has to be there in the solitude, in the dark. Someone must be there. The gaps are where this story plays and something unlovely and cold lives there. The buzz of a synth and a distant processed guitar that sounds like a dog barking falls to silence.

The usual minimalist drums are joined by another chorused guitar playing minor chord figures. The bass fills the gap as the figure is repeated.  The bass picks up with semi-quavers before a more synchopated groove. Smith comes in. A dry vocal much further up front than any so far on the record. The final thoughts of a suicide? The disappointment of anyone still young and learning how flimsy even the best things are and could collapse in as little as seventeen seconds. The wish never came true and the girl starts to sing. The girl might be the end ("the opera ain't over ...") Whatever it is, that time interval is seen as a measure of life. Is it bleeding out? Something is going on after the thoughts end. The guitar chords finish and the drum pattern, now dry and closer, leaves us with a final couple of beats before the silence. End.

To read this you might think I'm describing some massive goth fest but really the thing that strikes me more now than when I first heard this album (when fresh in 1980) is how understated it is. The Cure, along with the Banshees and Bauhaus etc., went on to upscale their images until the big black hair monster overtook the look and T-shirts sold in their millions. But for the moment it was a band who'd already shown their skills and were already moving on to produce music that was too strong to forget but also too difficult for the mainstream. If you YouTube the video for A Forest you'll see what I mean here. It's a long song without a chorus and the band whose hair is neat and short wear jumpers rather than capes. Smith frequently fills the screen, lipsynching straight down the camera, keeping his expression plain. Images of forests dissolve in and out of view but mostly it's just the band playing. This is definitive post punk as it eschews the marketing image of flamboyance for something everyday while the music speaks for itself; a reaction against the plastic glued up spikes and torn jeans.

It wouldn't last but didn't have to. Smith and co. grew into what would soon be called goth and embraced that for a few very successful years before moving on again. The freshness, cheek and invention would wear out as it always does. Until that started, though, there was this set of pieces that feel coherent enough to identify with but without the grandiose overstatement of a '70s concept album. It's why it still works. Yes, its chorused guitar tones and telephone vocals and drum machines scream early '80s, regardless of how many hipsters copy them and cry postmodernism, it's not the datedness of the sound but the essence of the feeling. It's from the doom of the early X life under the nuclear apocalypse and it's time stamped. That said, I don't consider the notion that period-specific culture is any the less for that character. I've heard too many defences in the name of timelessness made in the name of things whose blandness and conventionality should have them all but shunned by their decade of origin. If flavourless garbage like Steely Dan or ELO are timeless I'll take dated any day. This is from 1980, sounds like it, and it sounds good now. If you've been young and felt, you've felt this.

1980@40: GLASS HOUSES - BILLY JOEL

What's this shit doing here? I know, I started so well with some strong pioneering albums from the margins o' the post punk fangledangle. Why this mainstream crud? Because there's a time-bound memory attached to it and now that I hear it again I'm struck by something.

The songs? They're ok as structures; the chords flow and the transitions between verses, choruses and middle eights are smooth. And they do have the personality supplement that any accomplished songwriter will bring. Take the arrangements away and they're recognisable and playable.

The production? Well, you could hear this and easily think it was a kind of boomer-retro with no difficulty at all. Everything sits where it should and no information is lost.

Are you just saying it's bland or mediocre? Well, yes and no. Honestly, lesser songsmiths would be happy with any one of these tracks and boast of them. No, everything falls into place and the message needs no repetition. He's making it do what it says on the label.

What then? Hard to pinpoint but there's a kind of overhanging sneer to it that can't be ignored. It's there in the Stones riffing of the opening track with the polished-out Jagger vocal. Everyone still likes the Stones, don't they? Well, the Stones I liked back there at seventeen was the great singles band of the '60s. In 1980, releasing albums patched from spare sessions left off previous records, the Stones didn't seem to like the Stones that much. But Billy Joel is banking on you liking his version of it.

The next track is packed with lots of goodness from a producer (Phil Ramone) who knew that a cute backing vocal hook that sounded like it was coming from an old phone sounded NOW! Oh, and the chunky palm muted guitar and bellying echo vocals of any Cars track from the time helped. This is Billy in New Wave mode.

Don't Ask Me Why is a Paul McCartney pastiche with a perky acoustic guitar spring. Still Rock and Roll to Me plays on both sides of the street with nods to the Elvis of where it all began and the snotty thrashing rockabilly of the Stray Cats. He's out of style but it's still rock and roll to him. The big drunk-uncle sax solo sounds like a taunt. Hey, punk, I was already there. All for Leyna begins with a chorused piano and pedal distorted guitar and quirky rhythm section. It sounded and sounds still like Toto.

I Don't Want to Be Alone doesn't just sound like Elvis Costello even down to the white knuckle pre-chorus transition but also puts EC's most used phrase in the title. It's so obviously pastiched it sounds like a pisstake. But it isn't. It seems to dare anyone younger in his audience to point it out so he can come back with how long he'd been sweating at this game before that brat came along.

Sleeping with the Television On has that syncopated quirky perky rhythm that still makes me wince. You Are the One at least sounds like something from a Billy Joel album. It's perfectly judged, well delivered and sounds sincere. I wonder if Close to the Borderline is Billy's garbled version of something like Television. Finally, Through the Long Night begins with a late '60s pop French horn riff and a perfectly pleasant twisty melody and another British Invasion vocal (think Odessey era Zombies).

End.

This album emerged after a mass of interviews in the late '70s that always seemed to include how Billy hated the ugliness of the punks' music but felt triumphant at being more of a success. This  outing has the feel of a begrudging acceptance. That it's too bland and too late doesn't seem to bother him. And why should it? He was right. The punks lost and the great tide of pitch perfect professionalism just kept swelling. The longer game was in fact still happening deep below the current and learning that it didn't need the stadium or the major deal as "local" always felt more exciting and intimate.

But there's a dark shadow to this record and it falls on me.

In 1980 I was sent down to Brisbane to buff up my high school results so I could get into Uni. Not getting into Uni was not on. Fine with me, more opportunity to have fun and find stuff out. The place that all my kind were sent to if we hadn't said our prayers was called Hubbard's. What they did was add supplements to your crappy subjects and push you through to getting the numbers you needed. This wasn't generally for medicine or law, mind you (but one fellow alumnus o' mine was heading into medicine through this very avenue). Anyway, we were poor little rich kids who had to behave for a year before entering the better class of opportunity at the end of at least an Arts degree.

A few of us took a month or two to gravitate but we did and found some good company. Really, the schoolwork was routine and a lot more serious than any of us were used to but we knew the stakes now so we did get into it. But at close of play each week we had fun. And with the connections we had we still partied. This time we also studied but we still partied. And we all got through.

Maybe. One who probably didn't was Tusk. I'm calling him that because that was an album he probably liked. I have no evidence of this, I'm just making it up, but read on.

Tusk was tall and good looking but couldn't make that work. He said little and when he did it came out as labour, a kind of cleft palate struggle that always just sounded uncomfortable. He skulked in company, hanging around the back as though he was in a school class photo, and had to be drawn to join in. Well, I can be like that, too (take me out of adoring company and I shrink into dowdy wordless failure), but I'd look at him and think, you've got everything, why are you like this?

The other thing is that he clung. If we'd been more mature seventeen year olds we would have understood this and extended some support. Instead, we used him. He drove us around the city when we'd be getting into the booze or the parties or whatever and invited us not only into his home but into the high rise unit his parents owned on the Coast. There was no hatred here. I would shy from even calling it contempt. It was more like the guy in the band who owns the van. He did at least get opportunities out of it, if success continued to elude him.

Ok, so why...? Well, for almost that entire year, if you got into his car as we all did he would stab the cassette player with his car copy of Glass Houses. If the trip was long enough we would hear it from minute zero to the very end. We knew the lyrics and arrangements and so well that a bar or two out of context could send any of us rigid with mocking laughter. The other thing was that it was never at normal car volume but at a windscreen vibrating roar. It was as though Tusk thought massive volume stood in for cultural power, that the might of this ghastly smugness only needed to be set on 10 to become Never Mind the Bollocks. It's cringing uncoolness blasted into us and formed a kind of ticket price for Tusk's inner sanctum.

Billy Joel sounds like he's thinking of what his '80s are going to be like. The way he's doing that is by trying to sound like the cooler records from the late '70s. You can hear the cogs turning when so much of it veers toward the new songwriter he thinks is closest to him in terms of craft, Elvis Costello. He ditched that as soon as he realised that it wasn't going to be so tough to hold on to the various teams in suburbia and the ageing boomers and used this self-conscious step to get a lot leaner. Did I care about that? No. I wouldn't have cared about this but for Tusk and his deafening car sound system through which this thing blasted for months.

As much as we winced or sniggered about it, I do recall feeling smug about my favourite music changing this ogre from the mainstream. Even down to the cover art with him in his zip-up and still-rock-and-roll sneakers, about to hurl a rock into the glass walls of a designer mansion somewhere that I didn't care about in North America (which I also didn't care about) it screamed shopping centres and wrestlemania. To his credit, Joel does own this. Apart from that one Elvis Costello clone, he presents himself unmistakably.

As for Tusk. He drove me down to Schoolie's Week on the Coast after exams. Other members of his family came by and we were less than welcome so I hooked on to the caravan of closer friends who had turned up and went to hang out at Kaye's place at Mermaid Beach for the rest of the week. I lived on beer, blackberry nip and Chiko rolls and regretted it with pain. He picked me up for a lift back to Brisbane. It was raining heavily on the freeway. I tried to get a Tubeway Army cassette going but the tape was damaged and had no top end. He took it out and put a Smokie compilation on. (It's not that long a drive.) And then he saw me off at the airport. Everyone else was still down there. I shook his hand with a smile and headed to my gate, knowing I would never lay eyes on him again.

I had the feeling he'd do ok. He'd get into uni or go and join his family in their business or something and make all the right decisions. And he'd probably be genuinely happy about it, more consistently than me and for longer. He could even boast a real flirtation with the wild side, hanging around with the Brisbane punks (all middle class of us) in his days o' youth. I know how writerly this is sounding, roping him to his favourite record and the desperation of its author but, really, he still comes out better than Billy Joel because, for all Joel's foraging and grasping at cool, Tusk wasn't listening to it because he thought he had to or had to be known to listen the way the rest of us did with our records, he listened because he liked it. And because that makes him far less of a conspicuous consumer than any of the rest of us cadging lifts off him he could probably hear it again now and smile warmly at the memory. As for me I listened to all of it again for this article on YouTube and forgot early tracks by the time I had to describe them. Was I just transported by a residual distaste back forty years? The idea that that might count as nostalgia just sent a shiver through me.