The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World

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.

I don't care if Monday's blue......

...... because Friday I'm In Love.

Much smiles from this one at Buzzfeed. And if you have no idea - shame on you - see here.

This is what all the best dressed kids are wearing....

This is what Molly is wearing for her non-uniform day for Children In Need today.
The most amazing thing about this?

I had NOTHING to do with it. The first I knew about it was last Sunday when Louise and Molly went shopping in York and came back with this. Obviously, Molly's aware of The Cure, it's been played to her fairly regularly since she was born after all. But I was stunned (in a very nice way) when she decided she wanted to buy this.

Amanda Palmer's open letter to Robert Smith

Since hearing Girl Anachronism on some late night MTV2 show about a year ago I became a fan of The Dresden Dolls and subsequently Amanda Palmer. And since my discovery of Amanda's blog, I'm increasingly convinced that she's a wonderfully original voice in modern music.

Latest case in pint: This brilliant and impassioned open letter to Robert Smith. Palmer's a big fan, and suffered from just the same loss of faith with the Cure I did a few years ago. We're both pretty much back in the fold now. But reading her words brought it all back to me; the manic adoration, the hunt for information in that pre-Internet time, the T-shirts, the obsessive copying of the logo and applying the writing to every schoolbook, the posters, and the music - more than anything else - the music that filled my life.

And Amanda gets it - you can tell:

On seeing them for the first time, Disintegration tour:

When that music crashed into place (and what a perfect choice, that one, a perfect set opener, and perfect album opener….and god, just a perfect song: the huge major-chord crash of joyfully celebration with lyrics as dark-light, lush and vast and deep and bittersweet as love itself), when that first giant synthesizer belted it’s long, jagged and beautiful wave forms into my ears and meshed with the smash of cymbals and dazzling of lights….in that moment, my heart exploded. I now knew something I didn’t know before. I’ve never forgotten that moment.

Or this, a conversation at a gig;

“WHAT ALBUM IS THIS SONG FROM?” I shouted. “THIS IS FROM 4:13 DREAM” he shouted back. “IS THAT ABOUT TO COME OUT?” I shout-asked. “NO,” he shouted “IT CAME OUT, LIKE, SIX MONTHS AGO.”

And it was then that I realized, without a doubt. It hit me and it hurt.
I abandoned you. I was a Bad Fan.
Along with so much of the other music I listened to, I wandered out of the Church of Fandom in my early twenties and by the time I was in my mid-twenties The Dresden Dolls were in full touring mode. I was spending most of my waking life on the phone or on the computer, trying to make sense of this weird fucking life that I’d so wanted and I was so grateful to have - but at the same time, it destroyed something I cherished, which was the ability to hang out and absorb music, to live IN it.
I wasn’t a fan anymore. I couldn’t be. I was too busy working.

And that's something I share with her. Losing my way, forgetting that The Cure wasn't a band that stopped a few years ago. The new album still doesn't work for me. But I said that about Wild Mood Swings, said it about Bloodflowers, said it about 2004's "The Cure". But one by one, they've found their way into my heart and my head.

"The Cure" finally worked for me just a few weeks ago when I found myself in just the right mood for it, and the lyrics percolated through my head and I was singing through the emotional tears, convinced with all certainty that Robert Smith was writing about my life, knew what I was thinking and was singing to me, about me - just like he always had.

It was a wonderful, emotional and shattering moment and proof that I shouldn't have let myself forget, should have trusted, should have kept the faith. But I didn't. I was wrong. I know that now. But I won't let it happen again and neither will Amanda.

And if you aren't doing so already, go and read Amanda's blog, start with the Robert Smith letter and then look at this and this and just keep going...... And then go off and get yourself copies of Who Killed Amanda Palmer. You'll love it.

New Cure single.

I love the Cure.
No, I really, really love them.
They informed my entire teenage years and certainly informed my dress sense. Thanks to Robert Smith I discovered eyeliner, hair spray and lipstick. Thanks to that I was nearly signed up for my form tutor's emotional problems class, such was the impact wearing eyeliner to my mock O levels. But I loved the Cure. Always did. Always will. I have practically everything they did. I will buy the deluxe cds. I will buy the dvds. I will buy anything they do. Or at least I thought I would.

They have a new single out now called The Only One. It's available in the shops and it's on I-tunes.
But I just torrented it.

I am feeling guilty.
Of course, I'd be feeling a lot more guilty if it didn't sound very much like the Cure I loved from back in 1992.
Essentially it's okay, but that's about it. My Cure days may be over. What a horrible thing to consider.
Although I must admit the last album The Cure (2004) was a huge disappointment after the high point of Bloodflowers (2000). But all is not lost, old Robert Smith is talking about the another album before Christmas - considerably darker than the one they're about to release. And that sounds like it might be a very good thing indeed. Although it does mean that the new album sounds like it may be a bit crap though. After all if he's already talking about how good the album after this one is going to be, surely that doesn't say much for the album that's due.

Charlotte Sometimes.

Before it was a quite wonderful Cure song (see the lyrics) Charlotte Sometimes was a book of the same name, featuring a young girl called Charlotte (what else?) who travels back in time from 1963 each night swapping places with another girl in 1918.
Robert Smith of the Cure is obviosly a huge fan, having based not just Charlotte Sometimes & it's b-side Splintered In Her Head (from 1981) on the novel but also a third song; The Empty World (1984) from The Top.

But what consitutes a fan borrowing themes and ideas from a thing they love and what constitutes whole sale plagarism? It seems the distinction is small and often depends on how nice the fan is about borrowing so much.

Chain Of Flowers, the excellent Cure blog and website, which is much better and informative than the official Cure website, has links to the blog of Penelope Farmer where she discusses the issue and her meeting with Robert Smith. It's heart warming, funny and perfectly told.
Part 1 - The Cure(d)
Part 2 - Robert Smith for ever.

Such is the case with Charlotte Sometimes.