A long process
Fans won’t be the only ones to make the connection Disintegrationtheir eighth album released at the twilight of the 80s, even with the nihilist Pornography from 1982. This comparison is also validated by Robert Smith who explains it in a long video interview published on the group’s official website. “I wished that Songs Of A Lost World sounds like an entity, a bit like Disintegration, Pornography or Bloodflowers which had a special atmospherehe specifies. The Cure’s other albums like Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me or Wild Mood Swings were more catch-all. Here, I wanted the songs to all revolve around the same emotional core.“For Robert Smith, the biggest mistake was announcing this album too early to his community which continues to gain followers.”I spoke about it in 2019 and I don’t think I should have done it. We had just celebrated the forty years of existence of The Cure and I was thinking of a record that could sum up what we were. It was a big project, a little too triumphant and empirical. And then, as the songs built, I abandoned that idea and decided to let things happen in a more natural way without the idea of celebrating something. Finally we accumulated the material for three new albums. Twenty-five or twenty-six songs… As if we wanted to say: “Here is The Cure after forty years, be amazed.”
Questioning the world
Sixteen years apart between two studio albums is a long time. The Robert Smith of Songs Of A Lost World is no longer necessarily that of 4:13 Dream. In the meantime, he has gone through, like everyone else, questioning a world that is going into a tailspin and the isolation caused by Covid. Married to his childhood friend Mary Poole, and without children, he is sixty-five years old. He saw loved ones disappear around him. Death is present from the first song of Songs Of A Lost World. But it also haunts almost all the songs before spreading throughout the ten minutes of “Endsong”, the magnificent closing track. “Once I had written “Alone”, I knew that Songs Of A Lost World was going to become reality. As for “Endsong”, I composed it in 2019, the year I turned sixty. We also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first steps on the Moon. I was in my garden, looking at the stars, remembering the kid I was observing the Moon with my father when Neil Armstrong left his human footprint there on July 21, 1969. And, deep inside, I saw myself growing old in an increasingly broken world. For me, these two songs had to open and close the record, they echo each other.”
The live experience
These two titles come as no surprise to fans. Like “And Nothing Is Forever” (about accepting mortality), “A Fragile Thing” and “I Can Never Say Goodbye”, they were performed during The Cure’s latest world tour, dubbed Shows Of A Lost World Tourwhich passed through the Antwerp Sportpaleis on November 23, 2022.The special relationship we have with our audience and the circumstances have given us this opportunity to play and play these new songs in public again. And that allowed us to modify certain things on the album, even on songs that we hadn’t performed during this tour. But I understand that this process may seem strange. This album is awaited, but those who have seen us live already know more than half of it.“
This fascination with death is not new in The Cure’s work either. In PornographyRobert Smith sang “It doesn’t matter if we all die” (on “One Hundred Years”). But there is a more personal dimension on Songs Of A Lost World. “In the group and in my small social circle, we all age at the same rate. Over the years, death inevitably becomes more present. It’s a theme that has always interested me, I admit. But, on The Cure’s first albums, I expressed, even without realizing it, a more romanticized vision.“
The Cure in full swing: Robert Smith announces three new albums, a tour at the end of 2025 and a documentary!
The song “I Can Never Say Goodbye” was inspired by the sudden death of Richard Smith, the older brother of The Cure singer. “I wrote the music the day after his death, but for a long time I struggled to find the right words. I ultimately settled on a simple lyrical narration of what happened the last night I spent by his side. It was a very difficult song to present on stage during our last tour, admits Robert Smith. But it was still a great moment of the concert. Performing it in front of an audience who listened with emotion helped me cope with my grief.“
Fear and tension
Placed in fifth position in the album’s track listing, “Drone: No Drone” is another surprising composition. Firstly because we are discovering it for the first time, unlike the aforementioned songs. Then, because its violence contrasts with the general atmosphere. The keyboards are paranoid, the guitars dissonant. We feel the fear and the tension. “Drone: No Drone” expresses my difficulty in accepting reality in general and giving up this idea of great chaos“, comments Robert Smith again.
This song has its origins in a domestic incident. “I was walking behind my house and a drone with a camera flew over my garden. It made me incredibly angry. It was a horrible reminder of the intrusive nature of the world.“The very beautiful and calm song “Warsong” reflects, for its part, other concerns.”This song originally was about someone I got angry with, poursuit Robert Smith. I realized that what we were doing was similar to what too many people seem to be doing. Every year another war. It remains very difficult for me to understand why so many of us are driven to fight and fight and fight again, unless that is simply who we are as humans?“
One more thing. In case you missed this: Songs Of A Lost World does not contain the slightest hit like “In Between Days”.
The Cure, Songs Of A Lost World, Universal.
And what’s next?
We have learned to be wary of Robert Smith’s statements when it comes to charting his group’s near and future activities. But one thing is certain. After the two London concerts coinciding with the release of Songs Of A Lost Worldwe will have to wait until fall 2025 to see the group live again. “We had planned to play a festival next summer but we abandoned the idea. I would first like to publish a second album which is “virtually” finished.”
A third album is also on the agenda, as are the celebrations around the fiftieth anniversary of their first album Three Imaginary Boys published in 1979.I will be 70 in 2029. If I make it that far, it will be great. We will have lots of new songs to play. The last ten years of concerts have been The Cure’s ten best live performances. I want to continue. I don’t care about the other 30 years!” Director Tim Pope, behind the group’s most extravagant clips (Robert Smith and his gang locked in a wardrobe for “Close To Me”, that’s him), is also putting the finishing touches to a documentary retracing the entire career of The Cure.The summary of what I have done with my life, with images, recordings and things that would not normally see the light of day“, promet Robert Smith. Wait and see…
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