The Cure delivered a well-produced album that could very well fit anywhere in their discography, in a way honoring their own legacy.
The English gothic rock band The Cure released the album “Songs of a Lost World” last week, representing their first studio album since 2008. The new album is also unique in that all of its songs were composed, written, and produced by the band’s frontman Robert Smith. He is known for his messy hair, smudged lipstick, untied shoelaces, and distinctive melancholy songwriting, which is displayed masterfully and timelessly on this album.
The album starts with the song “Alone,” which has a nearly three-minute-long ethereal instrumental introduction, a classic within The Cure’s discography. The song opens the album effectively, if cryptically. Smith paints a picture of lovers watching the world burn. They call to a falling world, and “toast with bitter dregs, to our emptiness.” Smith sings with an urgency in this song, capturing a sense of desperation and propelling the album’s narrative forward.
“And Nothing is Forever” sees the narrator begging his lover to promise undying love in the face of tragedy and the end of the world. It has a bass riff that is more reminiscent of The Cure’s post-punk and electronic work of the 80s. Smith’s lyricism in this song is romantic like the 1987 album “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me,” with powerful imagery like “As the memory of the first time/In the stillness of a teardrop.”
The transition to “A Fragile Thing” goes from oniric to gothic, and from happiness to lost love. The third song on the album is the transcript of a breakup between the narrator and his lover. The narrator laments the loneliness he feels after breaking up, remembering what his lover said to him. The line, “Every time you kiss me, I could cry” creates a sense of melancholy nostalgia that pervades the album.
The next work, “Warsong,” returns to the dreamlike ambient rock of the early album, but with the more gritty and difficult aspects of love on display. Again returning to the motif of conflict and tragedy, Smith explores the idea of a love remembered. He laments having been born into an era of tragedy and bitterness. This song indicates Smith’s disillusionment with his time —- he came to as an artist at the height of the Cold War and has now lived through an era of political polarization and instability.
“Drone: Nodrone” starts, predictably with a droning noise that interrupts the flowy cadence of the rest of the album and reinforces the apocalyptic nature of the album. In a song that is lyrically and musically reminiscent of the 1989 hit “Disintegration,” it sees the narrator losing himself in the war, in his love, and in both.
Next, “I Can Never Say Goodbye” combines rhythmic piano with an underlying synthesizer beat for a slightly jazzy atmosphere. The song’s lyrics are autumnal and depressing, with imagery like “thunder rolling in to drown/November moon in cold black rain.” Smith develops a suspenseful and scared mood, with the narrator hiding from an unknown threat.
“All I Ever Am” sees a return to a more upbeat mood, at least musically. Lyrically, however, it is possibly the most devastating on the album. It sees the narrator regretting the way he has lived his life, possibly in the face of violence or his love ending, or both. He reflects on all of his actions that have led him “toward a dark and empty stage,” perhaps the state in which he finds himself on the album.
The ten-minute epic album closer “Endsong,” likely a response to other Cure hits “Plainsong” and “Lovesong,” starts with a reasonable six-minute instrumental introduction. The narrator is looking at the moon and reflecting that the world in which he grew up no longer exists. As the last song on an album that seeks to extend the legacy of an 80s post-punk legend into the modern day, this is a particularly poignant and heartbreaking final act.
A Cure concept album about the apocalypse was certainly a long time coming. Smith has announced his plans to produce a second sister album to “Songs of a Lost World,” which promises to be a similar homage to The Cure’s peak. The earnest songwriting, imaginative layering and overall thematic cohesion of the album would date the record several decades back. And yet the sense of reconciliation Smith weaves between desperation and hope makes the album distinctly modern. It reads like a gift to the fans that have grown up with The Cure since its initiation and to a younger generation coming into the timeless and whimsical heartbreak of Smith’s lost world.
