New Cure album – the genius of deep soul

Ok. Lost a bit for words here. Because sometimes a band creates an album so wickedly melancholic as it is brilliant, so deeply touching and resonant that all the ills of life and the world end up staccato-ed into verses without a bridge. The Cure’s first studio album in 16 years is magical prose, poetic melody and a living interlude for existentialism. 

Not since Disintegration’s release in 1989, where frontman Robert Smith faced his reality at the time, turning 30, has an album by The Cure been so wildly anticipated. And, just like Disintegration, it’s a landmark album.

From the opening track where Smith sings about loss and sadness, he faces his own mortality. It’s an epic introduction to an album that holds up a mirror, and we may not like what we see. Or it scares us. He sings: “This is the end of every song that we sing, the fire burned out to ash, and the stars grown dim with tears, cold and afraid, the ghosts of all that we’ve been. We toast with bitter dregs, to our emptiness,” It’s the realisation that getting older is inevitable, and the fear we all hold of the end. It’s a cold shoulder song, but with Smith’s trademark embrace, nonetheless. 

Beautifully melancholic, trademark The Cure

The second of the eight tracks album, And Nothing Is Forever, is an a-typical Cure love song. If there is such a thing. Again, marked with a forever interlude before the lyrics was over listeners with the power of a breaking wave at the end of a surf. Smith’s is the hand that’s held out to a lover, drowning, how we can save one another. A desperate plea: “Promise you’ll be with me in the end. Say we’ll be together and that you won’t forget
However far away (However far away). You will remember me in time. Promise you’ll be with me in the end. Say we’ll be together and with no regret. However far away (However far away). You will remember me tonight….”

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A little truer to The Cure’s lighter Goth-pop roots, A Fragile Thing weaves together classic Smith. Just Like Heaven, Why Can’t I Be You, it’s in that tradition. Somewhat passive aggressive in nuanced performance. There’s a bit of Joy Division inside this song, listen carefully. 

Warsong holds a dose of anger

Now, the Cure was never an overtly political band, but in Warsong, Smith’s pen and clear anger about the state of the world cuts as sharp as any protest song. Here, he deals with propaganda, the toll of war. “Oh, it’s misery the way we fight. For bitter ends we tear the night in two. I want your death; you want my life. We tell each other lies to hide the truth” It’s an instant indictment on the state of the world we live in now. It’s an alternative piece of operatic discomfort, and it seems to be his absolute intention. He continues to lament: “And we hate ourselves for everything we do. The shame, wounded pride, vengeful anger burning deep inside. Poison in our blood. And pain, broken dreams, mournful hopes. For all we might have been, all misunderstood.” 

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Drone:NoDrone segues musically, quickly after Warsong. But the theme of anger and frustration remains. Yet here, it’s hard to tell whether this is hate mail to a former lover or a continuation of protest. Though it could be both. 

Songs of A Lost World is an album in the truest sense of the word. Enjoyed in sequence, every song tells a story, the sum parts of a whole, that paints a bigger picture. The Cure has always been brilliant at that. 

I Can Never Say Goodbye is a beautiful ballad. It’s lyrically haunting and a song of celebration and sorrow, at the same time, for Smith’s brother who passed away. This is a piece of music that anyone who’s ever lost someone important to permanence will resonate with. It’s a song that narrates Smiths own processing of death, mortality and the life of his brother. It’s classic Cure, it’s inevitable darkness with shards of light. 

Shades of darkness, shards of light

All I Ever Am, track number seven. It’s Midge Ure’s Dear God written in Goth. A song about the fear of what might happen if you’d empty your mind from all the ghosts and dreams that you may have held dear. What would you find? He asks the question.

Endsong is the final track of this brilliant piece of work. And when you get here, at its end, replay the album from the beginning. Because clarity never comes around the first time. Here, Smith stands before the end, and he makes peace with the journey’s destination that ultimately, everyone faces.  

Songs of a Lost World is a black and white photograph, colourised with hope and scribbled with questions. It’s a Picasso of audio that’s intense and feather-footed at the same time. But what makes it so incredibly attractive, is that it lays bare fear and apprehension, the darkness of emotion. And more than that, it’s deliberately and bluntly honest. 

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