As a millennial - and I’m sure Gen Xers feel the same way - life is beginning to feel a bit rough around the edges. I’m not the sprightly young buck I used to be. My back aches, my crow’s feet are starting to emerge and I have to run stupid amounts of miles just to keep the beer belly in check. But worse than all of that is I can no longer seem to afford a live gig these days without selling a pancreas or two (they don’t have to be mine). Seriously though, what has become of concerts? How did they get so expensive? And why do we continue to allow corporations like Ticketmaster (and the bands that enable them) to exploit us like the shameless back-alley ticket touts they really are?
Such questions have become a significant part of music discourse of late. And it might just have been legendary goth-rock band The Cure - and Robert Smith in particular - who have had the best answer to them. Which was, to paraphrase: fuck Ticketmaster, we’ll make our shows affordable and we’ll even make them three hours long so you get your money’s worth. Win-win for everyone - except for scalpers masquerading as businesses, perhaps.
Besides Smith and the band’s vocal displeasure and direct action over the state of ticket prices, The Cure have also been pretty active getting a much-hyped album out the door before 2024 kicks the bucket. To say that Songs of A Lost World has been a labour of love is an understatement - it’s been in the works since 4:18 Dream, the band’s last album (sixteen years ago!), and songs from this latest release have been on setlist rotation for a good while now. And while it’s a tough ask of any band that has been in existence since the mid-1970s to try and put out a work that rivals their so-called heyday (Disintegration, Head In The Door), they’ve astonishingly managed it with this new offering.
Songs of a Lost World isn’t a flawless masterpiece, but it’s a masterpiece all the same. It’s got all the essential Cure elements - big synthy sounds laying down the emotion, guitar riffs that jangle between the dreamy and the restless, and most importantly, Smith’s vocals - which are still as urgent, and surprisingly as youthful, as they were back in 1989. Fans of a certain disposition will also be satisfied that Songs of a Lost World is a lyrically heavy album. The ‘lost world’ of the album title is that of the personal - witnessing that as you age, your time suddenly isn’t as infinite as it was, nor your dreams as achievable. It’s not as utterly defeatist as some of their early works were (Pornography, Faith), but the album’s repeated focus on impending mortality does not necessarily paint a happy picture.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for its own sake. Even as Robert and company tussle on this album with the hard truths that come with time waiting for no-one, they’re clearly having a blast putting these musings all together into a fine collection of slow-build, heavy-hitting rock songs that, in that typical Cure style, elicit catharsis, rather than self-pity.
Let’s break it down song by song, shall we?
Alone: Signs of a great album normally begin with its opening. After all, doesn’t Disintegration start with Plainsong? In this case, Alone is very much Lost World’s cornerstone - it introduces the album’s theme of slow-building instrumental halves before the vocals kick in, as well as the lyrics, capturing the realisation of ageing, setting the tone (“And it all stops / We were always sure that we would never change”). Pianos echo in and out around orchestral synths, steady but insistent drums and guitar keep the song moving ever on. Sweeping, enigmatic, melancholy rather than despairing. A taster for things to come. 4.5 stars
And Nothing Is Forever: Rule two of a great album - make sure track number two is an absolute banger. This is The Cure at their most emphatic - all the soaring grandiosity of their bigger pop hits diluted into a heartfelt, mid-tempo number that again puts a focus on the autumnal stages of life. Its beauty doesn’t come from sorrow this time, but more from acceptance - that of being okay with growing old as long as you have people around you who still love you as you are. Technically, this is probably the ‘happiest’ song on the album, and certainly lyrically poignant (“...my world has grown old / But it really doesn’t matter / If you say we’ll be together / If you promise you’ll be with me in the end”). A magnum opus. 5 stars
A Fragile Thing: Another one of the lead-off singles off of the album alongside Alone. More piano driving things on, but this time with a more anxious, tense insistence. It’s a straightforward song at heart - one that focuses on the death of love in the face of absence and abandonment - and has some very Disintegration-esque guitar carrying it along. A solid pop song on the whole with an especially insistent chorus, but a production that drones out all of the instruments with each other (something that becomes a problem for the album onwards) mutes any truly soul-piercing moments. 4 stars
Warsong: Slow, heavy marching drums and violin plucks set the tone for a focus on the darker side of human nature - or to be specific, our need for violence and our failure to accept difference nor denial. Lyrics again absolutely on point given the current struggles of Palestine and Ukraine, but tune-wise it’s a bit of a plodding dirge and repetitive. Smith’s vocals lifts it out of the doldrums to keep it an engaging - and incendiary - eulogy for Man. 3 stars
Drone: Nodrone: Warsong’s upper tempo, funkier neighbour. The pick up in pace from the last makes this song all the better, and it comes with a classically catchy Cure chorus to make it the poppiest song on the album. Genuine vibes of Disintegration’s Fascination Street or even Screw on the Head of the Door album abound in this one. A real grower. 4 stars
I Can Never Say Goodbye: Enough pop - back to the sad stuff. The lilting piano that permeates this album returns, this time with a melody of heavy lament before a crescendo of grieving guitars see it out. There’s a real funeral atmosphere on this one, and a deeper focus on personal loss - Robert lost his brother over the time this album was made, and this could well be its motivation. Shakespearean references also abound in the lyrics (“Something wicked this way comes / From out the cruel and treacherous night”). A bewitching slow march of a song that again is reminiscent of the Disintegration days, and one that captures the pain of losing a loved one perfectly. 4.5 stars
All I Ever Am: Another tempo changeup - this one comes with a fixed stutter of a drum beat and a chord progression almost reminiscent of Lovesong. Both provide the raw emotion for a song about the flow of time and the memories that fade away with it: remembering who you might have been, suddenly unsure of how all of that led to you getting here, so to speak. Smith’s vocals are again a highlight here. While the production of the song is again kind of muddled like on A Fragile Thing (none of the instruments really come through), his performance on the song ensures the track becomes another example of the Cure’s excellence in turning introspective sorrow into anthems for the human condition. 4.5 stars
Endsong: One final guideline for a great album: the last song has to bring everything to a permanent, apocalyptic halt. Endsong is indeed that song. It’s a heavy full stop on an album that wrestles heavy themes but has been able to keep the deluge at bay - until now. In its final chapter, the album provides meditations on the regrets of failing to fulfil your dreams in a world that will continue to move on long after you’re done, and the crushing realisation of The End that comes with such (“It’s all gone, it’s all gone / No hopes, no dreams, no world / No, I don’t belong”). Synths sigh in despair, drums hammer the pace of the final procession, and guitars are finally set free to wail at the surrender of a person's own ‘world’ lost to time. Not a song for the already broken-hearted, but a beautiful, arresting conclusion all the same. 5 stars
Phew! Quite some weighty content to get through there (and perhaps some overly poetic descriptions on my part). But it all adds up to an album that, thanks to my complex, patented scoring system (take the stars and add them all up), is left with a score 34 and a half out of a possible 40. That, rounding up, indicates a 9 out of 10 album - worthy of acclaimed critical renown. Frankly, it’s hard to argue with that, even accounting for the heady bliss of finally getting an album from a beloved band after so long (and the recency bias that comes with such).
Given their consistent touring over the past twenty years, The Cure haven’t necessarily been away from music. But Songs For A Lost World at least confirms that even into their sixth decade as a band, they’re not about to start phoning it in either (nor hopefully ever will). This is an album that should, in time, stand among their best. And with promises of two more albums to come, it could even spell the start of a purple patch right before the supposed ‘end’ they’ve preoccupied themselves with on this album. Whatever comes, Songs of a Lost World is no indication of any lost enthusiasm on The Cure’s part to produce brilliance.
