In amidst the billowing synthesisers and windswept guitars, hereโs a couple of lines where Robert Smith in โAloneโ โ The Cureโs first new single for 16 years โ sings about โa boy and girl / who dream the world is nothing / but a dreamโ. In some respects, itโs not too much of a stretch to see The Cure as Robert Smithโs own dream world โ a self-sufficient fiefdom which operates on his own terms, largely without external influence. Musically, The Cure always been skilled at conjuring up their own hermetically-sealed musical environments, but this is also a band who have existed for almost a third of their lifetime purely as a live entity, away from the endless album > tour > album > tour routines familiar to most bands, admirably pursuing their own agenda, however mysterious that might sometimes appear.
In amidst the billowing synthesisers and windswept guitars, hereโs a couple of lines where Robert Smith in โAloneโ โ The Cureโs first new single for 16 years โ sings about โa boy and girl / who dream the world is nothing / but a dreamโ. In some respects, itโs not too much of a stretch to see The Cure as Robert Smithโs own dream world โ a self-sufficient fiefdom which operates on his own terms, largely without external influence. Musically, The Cure always been skilled at conjuring up their own hermetically-sealed musical environments, but this is also a band who have existed for almost a third of their lifetime purely as a live entity, away from the endless album > tour > album > tour routines familiar to most bands, admirably pursuing their own agenda, however mysterious that might sometimes appear.
Take, for example, new music, which Smith has been teasing sporadically since 2014, when he announced 4:14 Scream โ the follow-up to the bandโs 2008 album, 4:13 Dream. Since then, they played two new songs โIt Can Never Be The Sameโ and โStep Into The Lightโ at the Smith-curated Meltdown festival in 2019. All that shifted slightly in 2022, when Smith finally revealed the title of a new Cure album โ Songs Of A Lost World โ while six new songs appeared in the bandโs setlists during their 2023/24 world tour.
โAloneโ arrives โ at last! โ after a teaser campaign running for these last few weeks, including a new website for the album and a snippet of the track. For those who have waited 16 years for this, โAloneโ is reassuringly The Cure. The closest reference point is the stately โPlainsongโ, the opening track from their 1989 masterpiece Disintegration, which was similarly borne along on widescreen synth washes and found Smith wide-eyed in the face of apocalyptic drama. Here, โthe fire burned out to ash and the stars / grown dim with tearsโ recalls โthe fire is almost cold / And thereโs nothing left to burnโ from Bloodflowersโ โ39โ, but while that track seemed more about Smithโs own anxieties that his creative wellspring was running dry as he neared 40, โAloneโ has a much grander sweep: โThis is the end of every song we sing,โ no less.
As the opening track for Songs Of The Lost World, it finds Smith setting out his stall for the rest of the album. Windwept, asking questions, fearing the worst, this is very much Robert Smith and The Cure we can welcome back.
Songs Of A Lost World is released on November 1 by Fiction/Polydor on 1LP, 2LP, marble vinyl, cassette, CD, deluxe CD/Blu-ray with Atmos mix. Pre-order here.