The Cure's Songs Of A Lost World: a striking return for one of Britain's greatest bands

1 November 2024, 16:04

The Cure: Roger O'Donnell, Reeves Gabrels, Simon Gallup, Robert Smith and Jason Cooper. Picture: Andy Vella/Press

By Martin O'Gorman

16 years after the last Cure album, Robert Smith is back with an majestic collection of heartbreaking songs... Here's the story behind the new record.

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In 2014, The Cure's frontman Robert Smith told Radio X's John Kennedy: "I don't feel such a strong urge to beat people over the head with new stuff." He wasn't kidding - a full ten years have elapsed between making that statement and the release of Songs Of A Lost World, which comes a protacted 16 years after its predecessor.

Such a length of time between album releases inevitably raises expectations to a near-hysterical level - the likes of Axl Rose and Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine can attest to that - but thankfully, The Cure's return is an astonishingly bold, confident and most importantly, relevant one.

Not only that, but Robert Smith is now seen as a figurehead for all that is fair and decent in the music industry. His recent public stand against dynamic ticket pricing has proved that he's a good bloke in a world that seems increasingly untrustworthy.

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Fans of the giddy pop of their 1992 hit Wish should look elsewhere, as Songs Of A Lost World is reassuringly one of the bleaker Cure albums: a fitting successor to the dark beauty of Disintegration and Bloodflowers. Across graceful soundscapes of pounding drums, distorted bass and ghostly strings, all the touch-points are here: the solemn subject matter, the extended intros, the leisurely, funereal pace and Smith's howling voice, which sounds as clear and as anguished as ever.

However, at eight tracks and 49 minutes, Songs Of A Lost World is the leanest Cure album since 1985's The Head On The Door and all the better for it; it's a concentrated burst of emotion that doesn't lose focus. This is partly down to the steadying influence of Smith's wife Mary, who claimed that two sides of gloom was too much and he needed to throw in a couple of breaks in the cloud.

Radio X Record Of The Week A Fragile Thing, for example, is a gleaming tune that recalls the offbeat Wendy Time from Wish, while All I Ever Am is frankly the best pop song The Cure have recorded since the days of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me.

The Cure - A Fragile Thing (Official Lyric Video)

Despite the band continuing to play live over the past 16 years, The Cure's recorded career felt like unfinished business. 2008's 4:13 Dream was something of a compromise; a proposed second volume of "darker" material never appeared and the overall project was strangely unsatisfying. It was gratifying that Smith didn't feel the need to ruin the legacy of one of Britain's best-loved bands with sub-par material. Instead, he waited until the time was right.

The tracks on Songs Of A Lost World - and at least another dozen songs, according to Smith - were recorded in 2019, but were left waiting for sympathetic lyrics to be added. The intervening five years have given this new Cure album a reason to exist: as with so many other people, the COVID pandemic had a significant effect on Robert Smith. Before lockdown, the musician had lost his mother, his father and his elder brother. During the pandemic, he has revealed, the rest of his aunts and uncles died "in care homes", leaving Smith without an opportunity to say goodbye.

This is the main concern of Songs Of A Lost World: the gradual unravelling of a life as time grinds on. Like all of The Cure's most cohesive albums, it takes a theme and examines each facet with an intensity that borders on the painful All this has the potential to be triggering, but Smith's pop sensibility remains intact, meaning the new record is satisfyingly accessible; it doesn't pull any punches, but it's an enlightening and occasionally uplifting experience.

Robert Smith onstage with The Cure in Strasbourg, November 2022. The band had played many of the tracks from Songs Of A Lost World on this tour. Picture: Nicolas Roses/ABACAPRESS.COM/Alamy

Songs Of A Lost World continues (concludes, even?) an arc that began in the early 1980s when Smith led The Cure away from frivolous punk into bleaker territory. Over the course of three albums - Seventeen Seconds (1980), Faith (1981) and Pornography (1982) - the band explored darker subjects such as fractured relationships, the loss of youth and the merciless march of time.

The uncompromising Alone sets the tone for what's to follow: built on waves of Roger O'Donnell's vintage sting synth sounds and Jason Cooper's pounding drums, this is the best sounding Cure album in a long time, giving Simon Gallup's bass a punchy, distorted presence.

It was this track that reportedly "unlocked" the record for Smith; as with many other Cure songs, he found the words to express his mood in literature, in this case 20th Century English poet Ernest Dowson, whose piece Dregs speaks of the "drear oblivion of lost things".

The Cure - Alone (Official Lyric Video)

The rawest song on the album is I Can Never Say Goodbye, which deals with the death of Smith's elder brother Richard. He was essentially the man who kick-started young Robert's musical career in the first place, meaning this is both a howl at the injustice of life and a tribute to a major influence on the Cure frontman's worldview. Smith quotes Macbeth via Ray Bradbury: "Something wicked this way comes, to steal away my brother's life." Such a line could easily be melodramatic in the wrong hands, but here it works perfectly.

I Can Never Say Goodbye

And Nothing Is Forever, which sounded overly sweet at the live shows in 2022, is given a stately grace on vinyl. Written about a broken promise to a dying friend, it's as bittersweet as Smith's 2001 song Cut Here, which grappled with his anguish at the loss of his friend Billy Mackenzie of The Associates.

The mood sparks into anger on Warsong, which concerns an ongoing fractious relationship and showcases the work of guitarist Reeves Gabrels. This is the first time David Bowie's former Tin Machine collaborator has contributed to a Cure studio album since he joined the band in 2012. Here, he proves himself to be the perfect sparring partner for Smith, offering swathes of noise and texture to the songs.

Warsong

Both Warsong and Drone: Nodrone - inspired by Smith having the uncomfortable experience of a spy drone flying over his garden - feature the frontman at his most defiant. One of the three songs on Songs Of A Lost World that weren't road-tested on the last Cure tour, the latter has a remarkable swagger that gives the record an unexpected toughness.

Robert Smith gets stuck in to a number of dysfunctional relationships on the new Cure album, Songs Of A Lost World. Picture: Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP/Alamy

The album finishes with 10-minute long Endsong, which really does feel like it could be the final word from The Cure. No other track in the band's oeuvre has evoked such a sense of personal, outraged resignation. The "Lost World" of the title is the life and the relationshps that Smith knew as a boy, but Endsong is no old man's rant about things being better in the old days - this is a simple and brutal acceptance of the inevitable. A song like this should be utterly depressing... but instead the result is mesmerising.

Over an insistent, developing guitar riff - a Cure speciality - Smith faces the prospect of finally floating into the ether: "I will lose myself in time... it won't be long." Like the face buried in stone that adorns the cover (a sculpture by the Slovenian artist Janez Pirnat), Smith waits for eternity to engulf him.

The Cure - ENDSONG - Shows Of A Lost World - Live Mix 2022 #4 [Multi Sub]

If this album really is the end of the line for The Cure (although Smith is claiming there is another LP already waiting in the wings), then Endsong is the ultimate way to bring down the curtain.

Emotional, heartbreaking and invigorating all at the same time, Songs Of A Lost World sees Robert Smith trying to make sense of the world around him in the only way he can: through his music and his lyrics. And that's really what poetry is, isn't it?