The Cure – Songs of a Lost World – Album Review
by Killian Laher

Never mind Brat Summer… Cure Winter is here.  The Cure have finally released their 14th studio album, 16 years after 4:13 Dream.  It’s an album proclaimed as their best since Disintegration.  I’ll settle for another Bloodflowers.

The album begins with Alone, taking its time to unfurl with big Disintegration-style washes of keyboard, and three minutes of intro before Robert Smith opens his mouth to sing.  A stately slab of gloom which wouldn’t be out of place alongside Plainsong et al.  And Nothing Is Forever has slow drifting keyboards that sound like strings, again building up for three minutes.  Despite Smith’s weary vocals, singing “Promise you’ll be with me in the end”, this one feels more optimistic, almost romantic.  It’s poppy, in a slow Cure-ish way, with semi-orchestral flourishes.

Things kick up a gear on A Fragile Thing, a moody-as-fuck bassline from Simon Gallup and a tune that sounds like the marriage of New Order and Tears for Fears, with a drop of classic 80s Cure thrown in, alongside some great guitar work.  Just when proceedings are in danger of lurching towards ‘fun’, we get the extremely downcast Warsong.  It starts with the wheeze of a droning organ, joined by doom-laden guitars in the mould of Mogwai’s heavier moments.  This glorious guitar heaven is accompanied by a most despairing vocal from the singer.

Drone:Nodrone has similarly growling guitars – it’s more uptempo than what has gone before but not exactly ‘pop’.  The pace breaks up the serene drift of the album nicely, bouncing grumpily along with Robert Smith singing about how “I’m pretty much done”.  This mood is fleeting – I Can Never Say Goodbye builds up slowly with gloomy keyboards, a moody, proggy lament about Smith’s late brother (“something wicked this way comes to steal away my brother’s life”).

Musically All I Ever Am has the most, dare I say it, goth-tinged guitar riff with heavy drumming, leading in nicely to the final, 10-minute Endsong.  This is a classic Cure closer, it distils the rest of the album and stretches it out to the max.  Over six minutes of slow-burning enormous washes of synth, slow steady drums and lovely guitar work, Smith sings about how “I’m outside in the dark, wondering how I got so old”.  Turn it up loud, it’s a track to get utterly, utterly lost in.  Boys may not cry… but one or two men might.

It’s an album of stadium-sized slabs of gloom, it sounds absolutely enormous.  It feels like a final statement from the Cure, however, there’s talk of at least one further album.  This would be a fine album to finish on, it’s at least as good as Bloodflowers.  As for the Disintegration comparisons?  It would be difficult for a Cure album to have the same impact in 2024 as in the late 80s but it’s a very necessary Cure album, one that is definitely worth the 16-year wait.

Alone