Album Review: The Cure, Songs Of A Lost World

In 1980 on the Camus/Kafka-infused, utterly bleak but terribly beautiful Seventeen Seconds, The Cure’s Robert Smith, at the tender age of 20, created something of a sonic cocoon for tortured, bedroom-dwelling souls on their journey into young adulthood. On 1989’s Disintegration, at the ancient age of 30, Smith produced a titanic document of epic, tormented melancholy, never bettered, by anyone. Until perhaps now.

Sure, when Cure boffins catalogue the band’s 14 studio albums, Disintegration will be in pole position. But on Songs Of A Lost World, at the mighty age of 65, Smith offers magnificent succour for sexagenarians, further proving he is the quintessential artist with which to grow old.

“I’m outside in the dark, wondering how I got so old / It’s all gone, nothing left of all I loved,” he wistfully sings, in that enthralling, essentially unchanged voice of his, on closer ‘Endsong’. Lyrically sparse it may be, with mammoth drums and an addictive, pure-Cure riff tangling with a storm of synths for a full six minutes, before the first words finally arrive. But oh my, when the those words are uttered, they are agonising – “Left alone with nothing at the end of every song.”

‘Endsong’ is a companion piece to opener ‘Alone’, which also contains an elongated and exquisite instrumental section. Eventually, the words come – a harrowing lamentation of crushed dreams, and the realisation of the universal failure to become the people we so desperately needed to be. Emphasising the mood, Smith pleads, “Where did it go?”

Darkness of death and terror at mortality reign down on the record, but the faithful promise in ‘And Nothing Is Forever’, and the transcendent narrative of ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ (written about the unexpected death of Robert’s beloved older brother, Richard), prove pathfinders. Winter looms, but The Cure are in late bloom.

10/10