I’ve been waiting some time to weigh in on The Cure’s latest album, released November 1st this year. Songs of a Lost World makes that demand of you, to indulge the slow-burn experience of each tune washing over you like a midnight tide, from the miasma of languorous guitars that herald the expansive intro of Alone and the entire album, to the dark cacophony and taut feedback of Endsong that wraps up this incredible release.

I think you could write an article on each song itself. “This is the end of every song that we sing” to start the very first track on the first album in sixteen years should stand shoulder to shoulder with “It doesn’t matter if we all die” from One Hundred Years, off 1982’s absolutely landmark album Pornography. Iconic lyrics that start iconic songs on iconic albums.

Of course fans and reviewers alike want to draw comparisons to the ‘Dark Trilogy’ of Pornography / Disintegration / Bloodflowers, particularly in the goth scene they helped define. And that scene in turn informed the vast majority of The Cure’s audience, despite the fervent denials of Robert (and Pete and Andrew and Siouxsie and…). It was and is an ouroboros of grim creativity that I adore – but I don’t know if we do any of these albums justice by comparing them, decades apart. Particularly when we look at the oeuvre of The Cure, probably one of the most unpredictable bands in the world!

So here we are, barely one song in and already analysing the legacy of this album, this band and the entire subculture around it. The Cure are good at provoking these introspections, through that magical skill of Robert Smith, songwriter. He shares what feels like achingly personal stories that utterly throw your convictions and certainties. With just a few minutes (or in some cases, many more) of music, The Cure can unsettle and seduce the mind.

One thing I am certain of though, is my feeling that this is not just an elegy of an album. It is packed full of wistful reflection and catharsis yes – but my overall impression is not of saying goodbyes or mired in sad reflection, but indeed celebrating accomplishment. Smith wrote and composed every song in its entirety, and I firmly believe what he’s created is a testament to an incomparably successful career of creativity. That said, “I Can Never Say Goodbye” is possibly the most direct and heart-breaking song I’ve heard in years. Once again I feel honoured that Smith would share something so horrendously personal with us.

In talking about writing this and the other tracks on Songs of a Lost World, Smith makes it clear that we shouldn’t become mired in mournfulness – that for all he has reinterpreted his relationship with mortality, life does indeed go on. Life carried on after each album in the original Dark Trilogy, and will do so again for The Cure – there’s a world tour to launch, and more new music to release before the Fiftieth Anniversaries of their founding and first release. Will that mark an end to the band that has waltzed with the concept of finality so much?

I seriously doubt it. We may have lost a world, but there’s another one right around the corner – and The Cure never seemed content stuck on just one planet anyway.

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Vaughan Allen

Claire Victoria
Mark Chisman