Album Review: Songs of a Lost World by The Cure

Robert Smith starts at the end for The Cure's first album in 16 years. 'This is the end / Of every song that we sing' is the cheery opening line, and a repeated refrain of 'nothing' closes things some 50 minutes later (the full line is 'Left alone with nothing / The end of every song'). It's safe to say that the godfathers of gloom haven't altered their disposition in the intervening years, and we're all the better for it.

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This is the end of every song we sing. At some point in the last decade or so, it occurred to me that The Cure were my favourite band of all time. It was no great, earth-shaking revelation, no epiphanic "Hot Hot Hot!!!"-style lightning strike (for which I thank my lucky stars). It was an almost casual shrugging realisation, the end result of an inertial buildup over years and years: snatches of music videos seen over my parents' shoulders as a child, absorbing "Just Like Heaven" and "Inbetween Days" by osmosis long before my circuits were developed enough to analyse music as anything other than pleasant noise.

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Having been teasing the prospect of a new Cure album for some time, the band's 14th long player is finally with us. The long-awaited follow-up to 2008's 4:13 Dream, Songs of a Lost World is a thing of beauty. Composed of eight songs--five of which have been regular staples in the band's live sets since October 2022--Songs of a Lost World is a sprawling masterpiece of melancholic musings set to a largely orchestral soundscape.

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The first new album from Robert Smith and co in 16 years offers beautiful bleakness, the sort of sorrow that you just want to bathe in Songs Of A Lost World may be the first Cure album for 16 years, but if you were expecting Robert Smith to come back skipping along with a quirky little pop banger like Friday I’m In Love or Inbetween Days, then you don’t know The Cure. Instead, Songs Of A Lost World is almost unapologetic in its doominess. It’s an album which feels mired in grief, mortality and the perils of ageing.

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For a band 45 years deep into a career they've worn remarkably well. First there's the aesthetics of it all - the hairspray and eyeliner hides a multitude of sins, and Robert Smith's unmistakable voice is somehow untouched by age. More importantly, though, it's clear how much they care. Songs Of A Lost World's lengthy incubation period seems to be the result of perfectionism and a surfeit of songs, with Smith telling NME that some of these tracks were first demoed over a decade ago, and that one if not two more records could shortly follow.

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If I told you 40 years ago, when the Cure was in the midst of its new-wave wonder moment, that the band would craft an inventively elegiac epic like "Songs for a Lost World” — a singular record worthy of face-soaking tears — you would have broken my teasing comb and melted down my Kohl eyeliner. Though the bleakly beloved Robert Smith was notorious for tensely flanged, existential rants such as "One Hundred Years" and the controversial "Killing an Arab," they were also the sugar-sweet weirdos behind the cartoony likes of "Love Cats" and "Bananafishbones. ” Yet here is "Lost World," the Cure's first album in 16 years, without a pop single or any trading-in on its gloom-merchant reputation.

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Unlike much of the Cure's output between the mid-1990s and 2008, Songs of a Lost World is textured and well-balanced, achieving a cinematic wall of sound worthy of comparison to 1989's Disintegration. Just shy of 50 minutes, it's also the band's first studio album in 16 years that isn't excessively long--a welcome change for a group that, while it excelled at taught minimalism early in its career, has tended toward rock excess ever since. Songs of a Lost World, much of which was originally recorded back in 2019, finds the Cure not only avoiding past mistakes, but also the pitfalls that can befall releases with such a protracted development.

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Sometimes, fans can wait so long for something that when it’s finally in their hands – or ears, in this case – they are filled with a sense of disbelief. After 16 years, British figureheads The Cure have finally delivered a follow-up to their last full-length, ‘4:13 Dream’. They've hardly been resting on their laurels during this time.

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