Cure fans will have already received a bleak sneak peek at Songs of a Lost World, the band’s first album for 16 years, as Robert Smith and his goth squad performed five tracks from the record on their recent world tour.
That run of gigs included a memorable stop-off in Dublin in December 2022, when Smith’s pre-Christmas playfulness stood in contrast to the wistful, at times downright downcast tone of those new songs. What a turnabout it had been from the summer of 2018, when Smith had hinted to a British newspaper that his creativity might have run dry.
“I think there’s only so many times you can sing certain emotions,” he said. “I have tried to write songs about something other than how I felt, but they’re dry, they’re intellectual, and that’s not me.”
Something has evidently changed in the interim, and on the majestically desolate Songs of a Lost World, Smith is a musician operating at the height of his melancholic powers. It’s a gorgeously grim listen in which the singer reckons with the deaths of his parents and his brother, Richard, within a relatively short time.
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Those bereavements have ushered him into a new reality, and for all the heaviness there is a disarming sense of newness on a record that finds him waking one morning to discover that he has become a different person.
But while loss may have unleashed a wave of creativity – it is obvious that music is his coping mechanism as never before – in other ways this is a project steeped in The Cure’s maudlin DNA. Big, gorgeous guitar drifts evoke the stoic haze of The Head on the Door, their 1985 album, and Disintegration, from 1989, while the sheer pummelling misery of the lyrics places it alongside Pornography, their 1982 LP, as one of The Cure’s gloomiest moments.
It moves like a glacier at midnight – magnificent, unstoppable and with a chill that settles in hard and heavy and does not leave.
Here is a track-by-track breakdown ahead of the album’s release, on Friday, November 1st.
1: Alone
The lead single had already created a buzz among Cure fans, with a feeling that the band might be back to their best following 4:13 Dream, their going-through-the-motions let-down from 2008. (“Happy and comfortable”, Pitchfork commented, scathingly.) Here Smith is at his most epically introspective – that’s when he finally turns up, cresting a crestfallen riff at three minutes and 30 seconds. It’s slow, sad and brilliant, while the lyrics offer a signpost to the angst to follow as Smith declares, “This is the end of every song we sing. The fire burned out to ash, the stars grown dim with tears.”
2: And Nothing Is Forever
Another shiver-inducing six-minute-plus dirge begins with strings and piano and a zigging guitar from Reeves Gabrels, the former David Bowie sideman who joined The Cure in 2012. The vibe is autumnal, while propulsive drum fills by Jason Cooper suggest Phil Collins drifting through deep space. The temperature is further lowered by Smith’s vocals, which arrive two minutes and 50 seconds in and are addressed to a loved one out of reach. “I know that my world is growing old,” he laments. “Promise you’ll be with me in the end.”
3: A Fragile Thing
The bassist Simon Gallup is out front as the LP gathers pace with a squalling goth workout that taps into the dread of Cure classics such as A Forest. We’re joining Smith at a challenging time – lockdown blues, perhaps? – as he wonders if it is his destiny to feel isolated and blue. “All this time alone has left me hurt and sad and lost,” he says.
4: Warsong
There are echoes of The Cure’s adored hit Lovesong in this shimmering and very 1980s affair, on which Smith’s amorphous guitar conjures with Pink Floyd and Cocteau Twins. It starts with a sustained droning note, overlaid with a glitchy guitar. The lyrics are a cheerful interpolation of Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. Only joking: it’s back to the record’s themes of isolation and creeping dread as Smith tells somebody close in his life that “we tell each other lies to hide the truth”. Someone needs a hug – and it’s you, the listener.
[ The Cure’s Robert Smith: ‘I survived. A lot of people in London didn’t’Opens in new window ]
5: Drone No Drone
The Cure summon the spirit of their acolytes Nine Inch Nails on a rare high-tempo number that features the closest thing on the LP to a singalong chorus, as Smith chants “Down, down, down ... Yeah ... I’m pretty much done.” Please don’t say that, Robert – there are three more songs to go!
6: I Can Never Say Goodbye
Smith takes his time again on a six-minute-plus tune that is mainly about the lugubrious guitar and frosty keyboard. But when the singer materialises, two-plus minutes in, he has a lot to get off his chest on a howling ballad that directly addresses the death of his brother. “There’s nowhere left to hide ... Down on my knees, empty inside,” Smith cries. “Something wicked this way comes, sealing away my brother’s life – I can never say goodbye.” This unflinching mediation on loss is perhaps the album’s starkest moment (and, yes, that is saying a lot).
7: All I Ever Am
The funereal pace picks up slightly amid stacks of buzzing guitar and a chunky riff that recalls New Order circa their 1985 LP Low-Life (in turn heavily inspired by The Cure). You could almost sing along to it – if it weren’t for lyrics that want to cry on your shoulder (“all I ever am is never quite all I am”).
8: Endsong
The Cure opened Disintegration, their best album – Smith, at least, considers it their masterpiece – with the magisterial Plainsong. Now, with the 10-minute Endsong, they attempt the same feat in reverse via a slow, throbbing howl of a song in which Smith, who is now 65, confronts the ageing process only to find that it’s confronting him right back. “I’m outside in the dark ... wondering how I got so old,” he sings. “It’s all gone ... nothing left ... all I loved.” Like so much else on this extraordinary album, it’s hugely moving – but the darkness is at moments overwhelming. It’s also a fitting conclusion to an LP that has no rainbows or silver linings – just endless rain clouds and the constant threat of another thunderstorm.
