The Cure: Songs of a Lost World - Why It Isn’t “Their Best Since Disintegration”
Because it’s actually their best since Bloodflowers ;)
As a 22-year-old music fan, I must say that I have been astounded by the number of classic rock bands who are still putting out fantastic albums. Though not a Rolling Stones fan myself, I have heard high praise of their 2023 release Hackney Diamonds — the 60+ year old bands twenty-fourth studio album. Likewise, I was thoroughly impressed by the most recent offering by electronic rockers, Depeche Mode, with their 2023 record Memento Mori. And in that same vein, I was glad to have a new Cure album in 2024 — which many are calling their best album since their 1989 magnum opus Disintegration (though I would argue that 1992’s Wish — featuring their biggest hit, Friday I’m In Love — as well as the highly underrated — and my personal favourite of their entire catalogue — Bloodflowers from 2000 are probably on par with Disintegration).
Disintegration was frontman Robert Smith’s mid-life crisis turned into introspective gothic rock, as 30-year-old Smith grappled with he and the band’s newfound popularity after their pop successes with hits like Lovecats and Just Like Heaven. Likewise, 2000’s Bloodflowers, supposed to be the last Cure album, saw a nearly 40-year-old Smith grappling with feelings of creative burnout and writer’s block that comes with aging — declaring on the track 39, “I’ve run right out of thoughts, and I’ve run right out of words”. This in mind, their newest album, Songs of A Lost World, does seem to be in a similar vein to those preceding chapters — a gothic rock examination of aging and loss — but from a singer-songwriter who, due to the passage of time, is much more familiar with these things. Smith, now 65 years old, is no longer writing about the fear of aging (after all, it’s happened to him now) but writes about the irreconcilability between his younger self(s) and his present identity (most pressingly on All I Ever Am and the closer, Endsong), as well as about watching those he knew and loved aging and dying.
Take, for instance, the album’s second track, And Nothing Is Forever — which layers, in typical Cure fashion, a mesmerising multi-instrumental symphony, featuring guitars, synths, and a poignant piano, behind Smith’s vulnerable vocals. The song, Smith explained, is about a promise he made to someone to be with them in the end — a promise which he couldn’t keep, and so, to make amends, he wrote this beautiful ballad. As has always been Smith’s great talent, he is able to stretch, or perhaps better put, distil, such personal incidents into their core components — to make them universal, recognisable, and relatable. Lines like “I know // That my world has grown old // But it really doesn’t matter // If you say we’ll be together” resonate so deeply, especially when paired with such lush instrumentation, that it feels safe to call it one of the most beautiful love songs ever written (of which, The Cure have written many).
Gone, or at least muted, is the young punk whose first line on 1982’s Pornography was ‘It doesn’t matter if we all die’ — this is a man who has loved and lost. In the 14-year interval between previous album 4:13 Dream and Songs of A Lost World, Smith lost friend and former Cure drummer Andy Anderson, both of his parents, and his brother, Richard. In fact, this last loss inspired the tragic lament, I Can Never Say Goodbye, which sees Smith heart-wrenchingly sing “Something wicked this way comes // To steal away my brother’s life // Something wicked this way comes / / I can never say goodbye”. Although Smith’s brother passed prior to the pandemic, his lamentation that he can never say goodbye is a cry that echoes deep in the heart of everyone who was unable to say farewell to loved ones.
Why The Cure, a band which will be celebrating its 50th anniversary next year, is still so resonant with young people like me, other than the undeniable musical talent on display, is the fact that Smith has been able to express the youthful fear of growing old. This is what made albums like Disintegration (…and Bloodflowers for me) so long-lasting. Songs of A Lost World, however, isn’t just a mirror that reflects my current angsts, but a mirror which almost shows me my future — what I have to fear is not just my own aging, but the aging of everyone around me. It is as if a 50-year-old band has reached a new stage of artistic maturity. And the 17-year-old Imaginary Boy we met in 1979, has now matured into a sombre old man. As a young person, Robert Smith has felt like an immortal pop culture icon. However, Smith warns us on Songs of A Lost World that immortality isn’t living forever. Immortality is everybody else dying.
