Fictions is hardly what you’d call regularly updated anymore. But sometimes something needs marking, important things that affect me. Maybe not personal stuff anymore, the last one being my 50th. Since then so much has changed and writing has become, of necessity, a thing I do for cold, hard cash these days.
But some things need marking. And a new Cure album is one of those things.
The new Cure album, Songs From A Lost World, dropped on 1 November.
I was trying hard not to get too excited by this, despite them being a band that had shaped my listening and my life since somewhere around 13/14.
After all, the last album, 4:13 Dream, was hardly something to write home about. Something that I listened to and basically went hmmmm. Maybe this was the end of the band who’d soundtracked every moment of my life since my teens? And if it was, then it was rather going out with a whimper and not a bang.
Although, typically, there was still that one great Robert Smith track, It’s Over, that was everything The Cure meant to me. Even on a bad album there’s still one piece of brilliance and beauty and rage that gets into my very best of The Cure track list.
But anyway. That was 2008, a lifetime ago in this life of mine. A new Cure album was long promised, each year passing and nothing coming. I’d got used to thinking of them as a band who kept going with a series of great live shows, never ever selling the audience short, two, three hour shows done so well, Robert’s voice still holding out beautifully, a live band better than ever before.
But if this was it, I thought, so be it. Robert had hit his 60s now. If this is the end, if all we have is a series of final live shows, there’s enough brilliance to make it all worthwhile.
And then we got the media blitz for this new album. The live shows came first of course, dropping in new songs, giving us an idea of the power, the feeling, and the emotion behind them. These were songs that had Robert visibly emotional as he was singing them, tears even. Songs of loss, death, ageing. Songs that harkened back to the non-pop eras, songs that felt like they ranked up there with the best of Faith, Pornography, Disintegration, and Bloodflowers, promising an album where there’d be no hits, just Robert opening his heart again for us all.
The hope rose.
Each time I streamed the songs live, I got that bit more hopeful. Maybe this was a return to form? Could it really be something great?
And then Songs Of A Lost World came out.
And oh, all that hope was fulfilled in one eight song, hour and 40 minutes experience.
Simply put, if this were to be the last Cure album, it’s a fitting end.
It’s everything I could have wanted and more. It’s just eight tracks long, but it’s eight tracks that just resonate powerfully. Every single one resonates with me, every single one is just a perfect listen, speaking to me as I am now.
This is Robert Smith singing of loss and death and getting old, perfectly, emotionally, beautifully, brutally.
It’s everything you could want for a final Cure album, if that’s what it might be.
It’s a perfect distillation of the journey we’ve been on with The Cure so far. It’s got that sense of finality and ending, these are personal songs, songs keyed into Smith’s insights into ageing, loss, and looking back to what we once were.
Songs of a Lost World may not be the final Cure album - Robert’s talking about 2029 being an end point, the 50th anniversary of the first album and his 70th being the time to call it a day - but if it were the last Cure album, then it’s a perfect way to end things. A full stop on things, something with a sense of finality, of ending. It’s beautiful and raw, emotional and powerful. I’ve grown up and grown old with The Cure, and this is an album that speaks to me of my life then and now.
If this were to be an end, then I thank Robert for soundtrack to my life, expressed never better than the final track, Endsong.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all your music has given me.
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