Review: The Cure By Alex Swift

The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World (Polydor Records)

“It doesn't matter if we all die” proclaims one of Robert Smith’s most beautifully poignant musings, from one their most beloved albums – 1982’s Pornography. Indeed, the band have often been lauded as masters of sorrow, their macabre imagery and melancholy compositions inspiring many musicians to knit sadness into a kind of art that can serve as both comforting and chilling. That’s far from the only emotional states The Cure are capable of understanding though as albums like The Head On The Door explored the fleeting moments of joy that give our lives meaning and saw a widening of the band’s musical palate. Their ‘comeback’, as such, is surrounded by expectation and trepidation for how the band will, or should, sound after a sixteen-year absence.

Songs Of A Lost World feels familiar, yet reflective. “This is the end of every song that we sing. The fire burned out to ash, and the stars grown dim with tears” Smith sings on Alone. Inspired by an Ernest Dowson poem simply titled Dregs, the song explores grief and those quiet moments of pensive introspection, when all that’s left are the memories, and the scattered fragments of what once existed. Like all of the pieces here, the opener takes its time, Simon Gallup’s bass echoing out over disparate synths, reverberating drum patterns, and delicate keys.

In a lot of ways, the album revisits the bands past portrayals of mortality, sadness and love, with And Nothing Is Forever seeming to call back with that opening line from One Hundred Years, with the line “my world has grown old. But it really doesn't matter, if you say we'll be together”, the swaying strings, and gorgeous touches of piano lending a beautiful quality to Smith’s bittersweet recounting of a promise he made to family member, to be with them on their last day on earth. The concept of the temporal nature of life might be familiar to the Cure but is one they approach with a mature confessionalism here, proving they can still craft deeply affecting music from those ideas, even in the late days of their career.

A Fragile Thing continues on the path of portraying relationships as delicate and fleeting, that can decay and turn to dust with the passage of time. With the ominous piano progression ushering the song towards a yearning and desperate chorus, this marks the beginning of a fraught and chilling second act for the record. Warsong feels made up of disparate parts, the wailing of distortion and clattering of percussion portraying the “bitter end” of a love defined by disdain and animosity. Equally Drone; Nodrone enthrals with a hypnotising chorus and seething lead guitar interplay between Smith, Gabrels and Bamonte, that carries a sensation of desperation, as the lyrics describe “staring down the barrel of the same warm gun” in search of “one last shot at happiness”.

Returning to the mournful yet strangely uplifting sound palate, I Can Never Say Goodbye is led by a simple piano melody that never changes throughout the song. This provides a foundation which allows the piece to become an emotionally layered ode to goodbyes, that grows louder and more heart wrenching with each contribution, before being scaled back in the final seconds to leave only the opening motif ringing out, as if to evoke the permanent, unchangeable nature of the past.

All I Ever Am is the song on the album that feels most evocative of the post-punk and new-wave movements that The Cure helped to shape the sound of. The sullen drone of keyboards, rhythmic beating of drums, and the erratic yet gloom-laden chord progressions of the guitar all feel deeply reminiscent of albums like Seventeen Seconds or Disintegration, whilst complimenting the slow-burning and instrumental-led ambience of Songs Of A Lost World.

Finally, we come to the aptly titled Endsong, which slowly unravels across ten minutes, with Robert Smith’s vocals not heard until well past the five-minute mark. This underlines the way The Cure allow their songs to breath on this record, as they tend to sprawl out into magnificently brooding compositions, demonstrating this band’s ability to provoke a strong emotional reaction, even when there are few words with which to accurately describe the sensations of loneliness, loss and despair. And yet even then, the lyrics work excellently to accentuate and provide perspective to those emotions. “Wondering what became of that boy and the world he called his own. I'm outside in the dark wondering how I got so old” our frontman muses on this final track, reflecting back on The Cure’s career, and the loss of his father, mother and brother, which inspired this albums discussions of fragility and absence.

However, despite the ever-present reminders of the inevitability of age and decay throughout this release, if you needed proof of The Cure’s timeless quality, you could do a lot worse than these eight songs! Across less than an hour, they recapture the stunningly sorrowful textures that, for many, lend beauty to sadness, whilst reinventing their sound enough to show they are far from becoming a pastiche of themselves. In a recent interview, Robert Smith outlined his intentions for the coming years. 2025 will see a follow up album to this one, which I hope expands on its ideas and themes, for what will likely be their last record. This will be followed by years of touring until 2029, and Smith’s 70th Birthday, at which point the band hope to retire. Whether plans pan out that way remains to be seen, but while we are constantly losing certainties of this world that we take for granted, I look forward to the final years of a world where the Cure still exists! 9/10