The Cure
Songs of a Lost World – Reviewed by Eoin Glackin
Formed in 1978, The Cure’s cultural impact is vast beyond measure. We can look to metrics like the 30+ million albums they have sold, their four Glastonbury headliner slots and their 2019 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that doesn’t come close to capturing it.
“Songs of a Lost World” is The Cure’s fourteenth studio album, co-produced by Robert Smith and Paul Corkett (Placebo, Biffy Clyro) who also produced the band’s 2000 offering “Bloodflowers.”
It’s been a 16-year wait for this LP since their last, 2008’s “4:13 Dream,” and I don’t imagine a “curehead” in the land will be disappointed.
By the time we wade through the nearly 3-and-a-half-minute instrumental intro of opening track “Alone,” there is already a sense that something powerful is on the horizon. And then, those vocals arrive. “This is the end of every song that we sing,” is the first line we hear. The dread looms early!
There is something so vital about Robert Smiths vocal delivery – powerful yet vulnerable, melancholic yet hopeful, tortured yet confident. It’s quite amazing in fact that at 65, vocally he hasn’t aged a day. He is just so utterly iconic.
It’s followed by “And Nothing Is Forever,” with a similarly lengthy intro, which is by no means unusual across The Cure’s catalogue. It’s a testament to his ability to write songs that could drag emotion and empathy from a lamppost that I stayed totally engaged through both opening tracks, despite a combined run time of nearly 14-minutes, and despite them having a similar arrangement and feel. This music just grabs you by the scruff and demands your utmost attention.
Smith knows when it’s time for a gear shift however and it comes in the shape of “A Fragile Thing.” This fatalistic, indie bop highlights Smith’s ability to take a simple musical motif, here a piano line, and build and build on it creating something stirring and unusual. A line like “I could die tonight of a broken heart” shouldn’t feel this sincere, but it does.
It features a classic Cure guitar solo, melodic and distinctive. It’s easy to forget what an iconic guitar player Smith is, on top of his other attributes. I even found myself marvelling at the sound of the hi-hat cymbals, not a compliment I feel obliged to make often.
There is a driving menace to “Warsong,” a menace that is turned up further on “Drone:NoDrone” which adds a layer of heavy industrial metal to the sonic palette, pushing into Nine Inch Nails territory. Reeves Gabrels’ screeching guitar work is given space to take flight here, and most welcome it is.
Smith has never shied away from theatrics, as displayed on the thunder and piano intro of “I Can Never Say Goodbye” that gives us another well-timed and welcome gear shift. This veers into a more melancholic realm, but is no less enthralling than anything before it.
Smith’s unrelenting sense of melody can almost be taken for granted. As each affecting riff and vocal topline gives way to another, you forget to stop and be impressed by them – a sure sign of a captivating, immersive listening experience.
Similar to the opening two tracks that feel like separate parts to the one epic, expressive piece, so too do the final pair feel like two halves of a whole. They stand apart yet it’s hard to imagine that thought and care wasn’t put into how they slip into one another like a carefully crafted jigsaw.
This isn’t just high-level song writing, this is high-level album making. Maybe this is a “Lost World” that has forgotten what incredible albums sound like – I don’t mean playlists stitched together by some well-meaning Spotify user, I mean albums. This is one of those very things.
Sure, the lyrics are often drenched in over-the-top, tortured-romanticism that in other hands just wouldn’t carry, but here you believe every single syllable that comes wailing from his throat.
He’s Robert Smith for a reason.
This affected me in a way I didn’t expect.
5/5
