The Cure emerges from sixteen years of silence with “Alone”, a beautifully dark single

The title revealed this Thursday also announces the long-awaited release of a new album, the fourteenth, on November 1st.

“Ct’s the end of all the songs we sing, the fire has turned to ashes and the stars are darkened by tears. » Funny sayings for reunions. Sixteen years after their last album, 4:13 Dream, it is with these words of despair from the single Alone that The Cure comes out of its silence. The song, available this Thursday, September 26, precedes a new album, Songs of a Lost World, expected on November 1st.

Martial drums, strings of guitars, cascades of pianos, slow and threatening rhythm: gone is the sometimes caricatured pop of their previous effort, the English find here the atmospheres both epic and claustrophobic of Disintegration. As if time had no influence on the group, any more than on the tearful voice of Robert Smith, 65 years old. The singer, who confided to Guardian in 2018 not being able to write “only dry, intellectual things that don’t suit me”, has obviously managed to overcome his blockage.

Their next record, the fourteenth, was announced in a mysterious way: a few hand-picked fans received postcards in September with Songs of a Lost World written on them and the date November 1, 2024 written in Roman numerals. A poster with the same information was hung on the facade of a pub in Crawley, the English town where Robert Smith grew up. Sixteen years of waiting and soon the light. Black, the light.