After 16 years The Cure bring us a new album
The Cure is here! This is something that Jonas Salk once shouted out when discovering the polio vaccine and something we wish would have been exalted early on when COVID was turning our lives upside down. Now I, and millions of other fans, get to declare it to those who haven’t heard just yet. It’s like Emo Christmas! After a 16-year hiatus The Cure are releasing a brand-new album on November 1st. It will be the 14th studio album by the English band who formed back in 1976.
The album is titled Songs of a Lost World and the group had already dropped two tracks from the LP on streaming services. So why did it take so long for this record to be produced? The project has been long discussed by Robert Smith throughout several interviews. When talking to the LA Times in 2019, he put the onus on himself for the delays. “I keep going back over and redoing them, which is silly. At some point, I have to say that’s it. It’s very much on the darker side of the spectrum,” Smith added. “I lost my mother and my father and my brother recently, and obviously it had an effect on me. It’s not relentlessly doom and gloom. It has soundscapes on it, like Disintegration, I suppose. I was trying to create a big palette, a big wash of sound.” From what I have heard on the pair of songs released, he and his mates have done just that. Meaning, they have captured that classic Cure sound that I was first mesmerized by in high school.
High school is already awkward enough, but as I look back, it was the music that helped shape me and assisted my blend with people I never would have begun to think of associating with. I was fully in both my AC/DC and Gansta Rap phase as I entered the long halls of people that were looking more like adults than the institution of children that I was being delivered from. Punk Rock had also just entered my life, and I began drifting towards The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and The Clash.
Then there was a ghostly shift. I was wondering what was up with those pasty-faced schoolmates who were donned in all black, hovering in the corners like daytime vampires. Now we might use the term “emo” to describe these Edward Scissorhands (that movie came out my sophomore year) looking “sad kids”. We didn’t have that word yet…these were the Goth teens. I never fell hard into one clique in high school. I played sports, so I hung with the Jocks. I smoked weed and ran (slowly walked) with the Stoners too. The Theater Kids, The Skaters, The Nerds and the Socialites were all my friends. We were all here together, trying to find our space. Many have stayed on the same path and others evolved into something else. The music remains. A few of my friends also transitioned in and out of various groups. They introduced me to The Smiths, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division.
So here I am, all these years later and Spotify told me in January that my most listened to band in 2023 was indeed The Cure. I would see them live, my senior year, in 1992 and they are a forever a part of my DNA. Hearing that we hadn’t gotten the last of new music from this ensemble made my tiny black heart smile (sarcastically of course).
The tracks that you can hear now are ‘Alone’ and ‘A Fragile Thing’. The titles themselves evoke that isolation and despair that somehow send solace through my veins. That’s what this band always did, they connected with our deepest and most desperate feelings. That’s what they are doing now. A lot of the fans, like me, are in their 50’s and even in their 60’s and they are still trying to figure out how they fit in.
‘Alone’, said Robert Smith in a press release, is “the track that unlocked the record; as soon as we had that piece of music recorded I knew it was the opening song, and I felt the whole album come into focus. I had been struggling to find the right opening line for the right opening song for a while, working with the simple idea of ‘being alone’, always in the back of my mind this nagging feeling that I already knew what the opening line should be… as soon as we finished recording I remembered the poem ‘Dregs’ by the English poet Ernest Dowson… and that was the moment when I knew the song—and the album—were real.”
Recorded at Rockfield studios in Wales, the album was written and arranged by Robert Smith, produced and mixed by Smith Paul Corkett and performed by The Cure who comprise Smith, Simon Gallup (bass), Jason Cooper (drums), Roger O’Donnell (keyboards) and Reeves Gabrels (guitar).
The Cure’s return is just a few weeks away and on Wednesday (Oct. 9) the Robert Smith-led group pulled back the black curtain a bit more on their highly anticipated Songs of a Lost World album by revealing the full track listing and latest single, ‘A Fragile Thing’. The wraithlike whirling in mid-tempo despondency is classic Cure. There is a morose, one-minute-long instrumental intro to the song that sets up a lyrical saga of ruinous love. “Every time you kiss me/ I could cry she said/ Don’t tell me how you miss me/ I could die tonight of a broken heart/ This loneliness has changed me/ We have been too far apart,” Smith sings. Yes! I am shot back into a time of innocence and naivety that no longer encompasses my being. I didn’t think I wanted to feel like that again, but there is something comforting about it.
The 8-song album will feature both ‘Alone’ and ‘A Fragile Thing,’ three tracks the band debuted live on their 2022-2023 tour called “Shows of a Lost World”, ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye,’ ‘And Nothing Is Forever,’ and the recently teased ‘Endsong,’ and three no one has yet to hear- ‘Warsong,’ ‘Drone:NoDrone,’ and ‘All I Ever Am.’
Robert Smith has gone on to say that this may be the very last Cure album. “The new stuff is very emotional”, he stated. It’s 10 years of life distilled into a couple of hours of intense stuff. I can’t think we’ll ever do anything else. I definitely can’t do this again.” I am just glad was get a few more songs and hopefully a goodbye tour.
It also looks like more information could be on the way via a new secret website. To gain access, fans need to visit www.songsofalost.world and then enter the album release date in Roman numerals: I. XI. MMXXIV. You’ll then get a glimpse of what could be new artwork in the form of a decaying statue, as well as being invited to sign up to a mailing list and join The Cure’s WhatsApp community.
The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World track listing:
- ALONE.
- AND NOTHING IS FOREVER.
- A FRAGILE THING.
- WARSONG.
- DRONE:NODRONE.
- I CAN NEVER SAY GOODBYE.
- ALL I EVER AM.
- ENDSONG.
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