Like strange birds of prey circling in a twilight light to accompany, in a processional rhythm, the last words spoken by Robert Smith, the singer of the group The Cure. « This is the end of every song we sing alone », Here is the end of each of the songs that we sing alone. What we have just heard is entitled “ Alone » and this dejected lament inaugurates the new album signed by the group, Songs of a Lost Worldsongs from a lost world. To which I dedicate this evening’s program in its entirety. I alluded to it during the series of Very Good Trip broadcast last week, of course still available in podcast, The Cure published last Friday a much-announced album whose release, for two years, has continued to 'be rejected. Here we are finally and, I say it in all honesty, I did not expect to be so captivated by this recording, nine songs in all, for a total duration of around fifty minutes.
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Since 2017, the year he began considering working on a new album, he has changed his mind and direction several times. His ambition was to conclude the career of The Cure in style on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the group, born in 1978. He worked on several tracks at the same time but none fully established themselves. The songs piled up and then, one fine morning, or one fine evening, perhaps, he said to himself: I found it. Like a novelist who turns over and over the book to come in his head, the light appeared to him: I have the beginning and I have the end, so now that's it, I have certainty. The song at the beginning, you heard it, is “ Alone “. And the one at the end, which you will discover at the end of the show, it is logical, is called, precisely, “ Endsong “. To the listener that I am, when discovering this album, everything, of course, did not appear with the same clarity. The impressions, multiform, fuse and collide. However, something immediately became obvious: the presence specific to Robert Smith's voice, the intensity of this presence and his way of bringing words to life. Words that I felt perfectly. I didn't understand everything he said – it's rare, anyway – but certain phrases resonated strongly with me, straight away. For example, We were always sure that we would stay the same but it all stopswe were always sure to remain the same but all that stops. It struck me, I wrote it down in my notebook. Probably because I'm the same age as Robert Smith, I'm even slightly older, sixty-six years since the day before yesterday.
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I knew the same world as him, and its end too. This lost world to which he dedicates this album, Songs of a Lost World. I learned, by documenting myself, that this formula that I quoted to you, This is the end of every song that we sing, a variation of the ending formula, comes from a poem called Dregslike the dregs, the dregs of a bottle, as we speak of drinking the cup down to the dregs, signed by an English poet of the decadentist movement, late 19th century, of whom I had never heard, Ernest Dowson . A tragic, brief life marked by despair and alcohol, Dowson died of tuberculosis in 1900 at the age of thirty-two. I was curious to read this poem, which says, attempted translation: “The fire is extinguished, its heat spent, there is the end of every song that man has sung, the golden wine is drunk, only the dregs remain, bitter like wormwood, salty like suffering, health and hope have fled like love, in the dreary forgetfulness of what is lost“. More than a century later, Robert Smith takes up this eternal theme, we have known it in France, at least, since the Renaissance and Clément Marot, No longer am what I was and no more will ever know how to be. I quotes Robert Smith: “This is the end of every song we sing, the fire burned to ashes, the stars pale with our tears, we are cold and afraid, shadows of all we have been, and we drink, until the end bitter dregs, to our own emptiness.
To find out more, listen to the show…
And I turn the sound back on Listen later
Lecture listen 56 min
Playlist :
The Cure
« Alone » album « Songs of a Lost World »
« And Nothing Is Forever » album « Songs of a Lost World »
« A Fragile Thing » album « Songs of a Lost World »
« Warsong » album « Songs of a Lost World »
« Drone : Nodrone » album « Songs of a Lost World »
« I Can Never Say Goodbye » album « Songs of a Lost World »
« All I Ever Am » album « Songs of a Lost World »
« Endsong » album « Songs of a Lost World »
