The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World

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The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World

★★★★

Released November 1st, 2024 on Universal

There are publications that, out of a sense of loyalty to their own misspent youth, will often claim that any new record from The Cure is ‘their best in a long time’. It’s never true. Having made their definitive statement on 1989’s Disintegration (the best album ever, according to Stan Marsh), The Cure lapsed into an extended period of mining that sound, making it shinier, making it poppier, turning in half-hearted attempts at ‘hit singles.’ Wish got them their biggest single, the still-ubiquitous “Friday I’m In Love”, but nothing afterward seemed to stick much. 2000’s Bloodflowers was decent enough, but neither The Cure (2004) nor 4:13 Dream (2008) were much good, flopping on a lyrical and musical level. They were fine – the band can always turn out a certain minimum level of quality, regardless of anything else – but there was nothing there that demanded a second listen, or even a single full one.

In the 2020s, The Cure have returned to reclaim their place as one of the biggest bands on Earth. The last tour definitely helped with that. Robert Smith, always a real mensch, proved himself to be the type of guy to pick his fans over pallets of cash, setting the price of the ticket low and keeping merch costs in the affordable range, unlike basically everyone else. Ticketmaster/Live Nation were hellbent on ruining that, but the tour still sold out and newer generations were introduced to the magic of the band, both as a stellar live act and as an archive of romantic-gothic wonder. Alongside this success now comes Songs Of A Lost World, The Cure’s first new album in sixteen years.

There’s an immediate sense on this new album that the detritus of their past five albums has been stripped away. The feeling of watching a band chase their tail isn’t there anymore. The vibe is much more of a return to the things that made them great on Disintegration. The intros go on at length, building steam until Smith’s vocals come in as a release. The bass has that fantastic lumbering effect that always served them well. The guitars appear as more than an afterthought for the first time in a long time. The pianos are stately and melancholy. The strings sound like they were arranged for a funeral, stripped of any synthy cheese remaining from the Eighties. This is The Cure by candlelight, which has always been the proper way to listen to them anyway.

If you want something with a bit of speed to it, this isn’t going to be your favourite Cure record. If you like the sprawling epics, though, this will easily be the best thing they’ve done since the Berlin Wall fell – an event I barely remember as a child. Robert Smith is on point, finally, delving into the spectres of age, mortality, heartbreak, and longing, sounding simultaneously like a love-struck teenager and a grieving old man. There is finally some real weight to his words and the way he conveys them, bringing us back around at last to The Cure of old. This is, at last, ‘their best in a long time.’

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