Saturday, October 12, 2024

Sunday Times article

From The Sunday Times:

The Cure’s Robert Smith: ‘Ticket pricing is a scam. It’s driven by greed’

The singer is back with the band’s first album in 16 years. In a rare interview, he holds forth on touring, grief and why he’s going to call it a day at 70

Jonathan Dean

The first thing you notice about Robert Smith is that uniform of his — wild hair, black clobber, lipstick. It is a look he has worn since the 1980s when the Cure became a cult and also achieved chart success. That is what you expect from him, but spend any time with Smith and what you will remember most is the man’s smile. It is generous, one that rather flies in the face of his band’s well-trodden image as being about as fun as a funeral, of their frontman being the gothic prince of all darkness.

“Well, I don’t read by candlelight,” he says with a grin, well aware of the image people have. “Yet I do spend a lot of time walking outside in the dark, which is in character. But it cannot all be doom and gloom — you need some light and dark.”

Smith, 65, is glorious company — the personification of that light and dark. I met him a few years ago and was struck by his warmth and wit. Back then he was writing the Cure’s new album, their first in 16 years, and I was aghast by his candour about depression and inadequacy. Now that record, Songs of a Lost World, is here and it is clear he was simply processing a lot.

Songs of a Lost World begins with Alone, which tackles planetary demise, features at least two songs about the deaths of people close to the singer and one called Warsong that, according to Smith, is “the most dismal song on the album — but it’s got a great guitar solo”. 

Forget The Lovecats or the 1990s school-disco staple Friday I’m in Love. Think, instead, of the sprawling melancholia of the albums Disintegration or Pornography for the back-catalogue benchmark of how this marvel sounds. It is eight tracks of lushly orchestral despair, written by a man struggling to figure out his place in a changed world. One song details how upset he was when someone flew a drone over his garden. “I was in my pants.”

Smith has been teasing a new record for years. “It’s drifted in and out of my life,” he says in a video interview he recorded for the label at Abbey Road a few weeks ago, admitting entire alternative albums have been binned. Still, the Cure are arguably more popular than ever, with a tour — 90 dates to more than 1.3 million fans— that peaked at Glastonbury in 2019. Smith planned to make a record for the 40th anniversary of the band in 2018, but that tour got in the way. And then there was the pandemic.

“I read War and Peace,” he says, beaming, about lockdown. “Everyone always says they’re going to read it, so I did.” Did he enjoy it? “I didn’t really.” He actually liked moments of lockdown; there were no planes and birds flew in the sky. But there was also, of course, loss. Smith’s parents had already died but “all my aunts and uncles died in care homes …” He sighs. In the time he has taken to make a new album, most of the people close to him have gone. No wonder Songs of a Lost World is a torrent of tumult — deeply personal, deeply moving.

“Our songs always had a fear of mortality,” he says. “I don’t feel my age at all but I’m aware of it and when you get older that fear becomes more real. Death becomes more everyday. When you are younger you romanticise death, but then it happens to your family and friends. I am a different person to the last record and I wanted to put that across. It can be trite. People could say, ‘Oh, we’re all going to die — surprise me!’ But I try to find some emotional connection to that idea.”

He more than succeeds. The album standout And Nothing Is Forever has the lyrics: “Promise you’ll be with me in the end/ say we’ll be together/ that you won’t forget.” It is about a promise that Smith made to someone who was very ill that he would be at their side when they died, but he was not. “It upset me,” he says. “So I thought that, by memorialising it, it would make things easier. And, yes, the person who it’s about would be happy with the song, I think.”

Then there is I Could Never Say Goodbye — about his beloved elder brother, Richard, who died suddenly some years ago. “He taught me everything when I was younger,” Smith says. “There was an enormous outpouring of emotion when he died, of words, music, painting. And this is a simple narrative of what happened the night he died. People say ‘cathartic’ too much, but it was. It helped me enormously.”

Smith was born in 1959 — the third of four children. He mostly grew up in Crawley in Sussex. When he was seven Richard taught him his first guitar chords and Smith played in bands from his early teens. The Cure were formed in 1978. He loved Nick Drake, wanted to be Jimi Hendrix and was swept up by punk.

When Smith was 19 he went to see David Bowie play Earls Court. The men would later become friends, but what happened that night informed who Smith became. Bowie played for only 42 minutes and Smith was furious — he told himself that if he ever found himself in Bowie’s position, he would always do more for his fans and, as such, the Cure’s gigs run for hours. “I’d hate not to be able to justify myself to that 19-year-old,” Smith says.

This desire to do the right thing extends to the hot topic of tickets and how much firms like Ticketmaster and bands like Oasis charge fans. Last year, in an unusual move for an artist, Smith set prices for a US tour and then took Ticketmaster to task over the fees they had added, making the company refund punters.

“I was shocked by how much profit is made,” Smith says of modern ticketing. “I thought, ‘We don’t need to make all this money.’ My fights with the label have all been about how we can price things lower. The only reason you’d charge more for a gig is if you were worried that it was the last time you would be able to sell a T-shirt.

“But if you had the self-belief that you’re still going to be here in a year’s time, you’d want the show to be great so people come back. You don’t want to charge as much as the market will let you. If people save on the tickets, they buy beer or merch. There is goodwill, they will come back next time. It is a self-fulfilling good vibe and I don’t understand why more people don’t do it.

“It was easy to set ticket prices, but you need to be pig-headed. We didn’t allow dynamic pricing because it’s a scam that would disappear if every artist said, ‘I don’t want that!’ But most artists hide behind management. ‘Oh, we didn’t know,’ they say. They all know. If they say they do not, they’re either f***ing stupid or lying. It’s just driven by greed.”

He pauses and comes back to Songs of a Lost World and its inherent, questioning gloom. “The world is falling apart,” he says of its themes. “It’s insane. It’s greed, inequality, monetisation. I’ve realised some of my reactions to the modern world are a bit extreme, that I’m becoming an old grouch and that it’s easy to tip over to talking about the fond memories of a world that’s disappeared … but there are moments I just want to leave the front door shut.”

He’s even fallen out of love with his beloved football (he supports Queen’s Park Rangers). “It’s become about branding, sponsorship and betting — it’s just hair, tattoos and selling stuff.” He smiles and admits, “This is really curmudgeonly,” doing an impression of Victor Meldrew.

Smith plans to take the Cure on tour towards the end of next year and keep playing shows until 2028 — which will be the 50th anniversary of the band. “I’m 70 in 2029,” he says. “And that’s it, that really is it. If I make it that far, that’s it.”

“I’ve led a very privileged life,” he continues, sweetly, softly startled. “I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been. I’m still doing what I always wanted but the fact I’m still upright is probably the best thing about being me because there have been points where I didn’t think I would hit 30, 40, 50. My mind doesn’t function with the same acuity it once had, but I’m much more relaxed and easier to get on with.”

How does he know? He grins. “Because people smile at me more than they used to."

Songs of a Lost World is out on November 1

Old friends

With all of the excitement over the new albums, hearing from some old friends who haven't been around in awhile and have asked about the old website and where they can find CoF these days. Here you go:

Twitter

Bluesky

The old website (The original is long gone, but someone made this copy a few years ago. You never told me who you were, but thank you!)

This blog obviously 

Simon signed bass up for auction

From Heavy Metal Truants:

Fans of The Cure, this one’s for you! 🫵

A Thunderbird Bass Guitar signed by Simon Gallup is up for auction! 🤘

Own a piece of rock history and support a great cause - it's #ForTheKids! Bid now!

bit.ly/HMTCureGuitar 

Friday, October 11, 2024

Cure live at Troxy London

From Robert:

TROXY ALBUM SHOW: TICKETS PRICED @ £56.61 = £50 FACE VALUE (INC £1 WARCHILD DONATION) + 8% BOOKING FEE (£4) + £1.50 RESTORATION LEVY + 2% TRANSACTION FEE (£1.11) VIA @DICEFM - NO DYNAMIC PRICING - DETAILS HERE.


From The Cure:

The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World : Album Launch Show

Live at Troxy London - 1st November 2024

Ticket info at thecure.com/troxy

Free Global Live Stream on The Cure YouTube - More details to follow



Songs of a Lost World full album show

Aaron Law posted this on Twitter and Uncut retweeted it so I assume this is okay to post. If not, let me know.

Yes, there's going to be a Songs of a Lost World full album show.

"I thought that was the end of The Cure"

From Uncut:

In the new Uncut, Smith reveals how he nearly disbanded The Cure in 2018 – but now has plans until 2029…

By  Sam Richards

In the new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – Robert Smith reveals how he almost disbanded The Cure upon reaching the group’s 40th anniversary in 2018.

“I thought that the Hyde Park show would be it, I thought that was the end of The Cure,” says Smith. “I didn’t plan it, but I had a sneaky feeling that this was going to be it. But it was such a great day and such a great response, I enjoyed it so much and we got

a flood of offers to headline every major European festival. ‘Do you want to play Glastonbury?’ So I thought maybe it’s not the right time to stop.

“I wasn’t stopping because I didn’t want to do it any more, I just thought it would allow me a few years when I’d still be able to do something else. I wasn’t that bothered, funnily enough. I’d arranged everything to end in 2018, so when we got to 2019, I felt relieved. ‘We did it!’ I’ve had a different outlook to everything since.

Pretty much everyone that died that meant something to me died prior to 2019, so I felt like I’ve got to make the most of it.”

Not only was this sequence of events the spur for writing much of new album Songs Of A Lost World, it prompted Smith to start looking even further ahead, to The Cure’s 50th anniversary in 2028 and beyond. “We’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the 2028 anniversary… The last 10 years of playing shows have been the best 10 years of being in the band. It pisses all over the other 30-odd years!”

You can read much more from Robert Smith in the December 2024 issue of Uncut, in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here.

Uncut magazine

There's a great new interview with Robert in the new issue of Uncut that's out today. 

Earlier today I posted some carefully edited scans of some of the info in it, but Uncut asked me to delete them. My apologies to them for any harm caused.

Go buy a copy and find out if there's a Songs of a Lost World album show coming up. What's the plan for live shows in the next year and more. Why It Can Never be the Same isn't on the album. Why there's only 8 songs on it, and what's going to happen with all of these other songs they have written. And there's so much more.



5 stars for Lost World from NME

From NME:

The Cure – ‘Songs Of A Lost World’: a masterful reflection on loss

Robert Smith and co’s first full album in 16 years deals in darkness and death, but with flowers on the grave

By Andrew Trendell

“This is the end of every song that we sing,” mourns Robert Smith on ‘Alone’, the opening track and launch single of The Cure’s long-mooted first album in 16 years. A radio-alienating, sprawling and cinematic seven-minute gut-punch, ‘Lovecats’ it ain’t – but it speaks to the heart of ‘Songs Of A Lost World’. Inspired by Ernest Dowson’s poem Dregs, Smith said that this was the lyric that “unlocked the record”: one that begins with an end.

Catching up with NME at various stops along the long and winding path of making the album, Smith teased that the record would be “merciless” and “express the darker side of what I’ve experienced over the last few years”, drawing more on the sounds of goth-rock standard bearer ‘Pornography’, having lost his mother, father and brother in the latter years since 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream‘. Take a deep breath, we’re going in…

Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten recently told NME how the band’s ‘Romance’ cut ‘Favourite’ compares to the likes of ‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed in feeling like both “death itself” and “the final hug” – “the saddest and happiest song possible” all at once. That bittersweetness is an art for The Cure, and you can rank ‘And Nothing Is Forever’ among gems like classics ‘Plainsong’ and ‘Pictures Of You’ as another masterfully euphoric sigh, one that sees Smith waltzing into the winter: “I know that my world has grown cold / But it really doesn’t matter if you say we’ll be together / If you say that we’ll be with me in the end”.

With “the dying of the light”, there is, of course, still some light. There are still pop hooks in the ticking clock rhythms of ‘A Fragile Thing’, as Smith measures how love is “everything” but ultimately makes peace with how there’s “nothing you can do to change the end”.

You want more gloom? ‘Warsong’ – a pummelling sludge of noise that mourns “the hope of what we might have been” – leads into ‘Drone_Nodrone’, a wailing, noir rocker with a devious earworm chorus that feels like the impish cousin of ‘One Hundred Years’, ‘Burn’ and ‘Killing An Arab’.

Then, album highlight ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ lays waste with an emotional H-bomb. “As lightning splits the sky apart, I’m whispering his name / He has to wake up,” pleads Smith. It musters everything he and the band have in the tank to breathe with that deep, dull ache that lingers when you lose someone closest to you: “Something wicked this way comes / To steal away my brother’s life.”

The 10-minute opus of ‘Endsong’ – always intended as the album closer – circles back to that full stop from the start: how we’re all ultimately dust and “left alone with nothing at the end of every song”. Merciless? Yes, but there’s always enough heart in the darkness and opulence in the sound to hold you and place these songs alongside The Cure’s finest. The frontman suggested that another two records may be arriving at some point, but ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Another track by track review

 From Radiowise UK:

“Alone”

We are in the era of streaming platforms and increasingly shorter songs and the Cure release a 7-minute single with 3 and a half minutes of instrumental intro: this alone gives the measure of the world in which they move.

Guitars, rhythm and synths that intertwine, then the voice that enters (“This is the end of every song that we sing”): it is the song that started the project of this album, born during Robert Smith’s nocturnal walks and from the feeling of overwhelm and disorientation that the singer always says he feels at a certain point in the night.

A song that brings the Cure back to the atmosphere of “Disintegration”, giving both the thematic and sonic tone to the album: dark, compressed, epic.


“And nothing is forever”

Piano and strings in crescendo, then the guitar, then the rhythm: another very long instrumental intro, over 3 minutes. “And nothing is forever” is one of the songs already played live in recent years: in the studio version it becomes even more powerful and emotional. Smith describes it as a song about mortality, about the promise of being at someone’s side in the most difficult moment. difficult: “Promise you’ll be with me in the end/ Say we’ll be together with no regret/For however far away” and again “And I know, I know/For my world has grown old/And nothing is forever /And I know, I know”.


“A fragile thing”

“Nothing you can do to turn it back she said/ Nothing you can do but sing/This song is a fragile thing/ This song is my everything/But nothing you can do to change the end”: “A fragile thing” is a song about the choices you make and the consequences they have on the other people around you.

It was played live for the first time in Milan two years ago: the introduction this time is short – less than a minute – and features bass and drums. While in the central part you can feel the presence of the guitar more, with beautiful embroideries (by Reeves Gabrels?) that make the song more effective than the live version.


“Warsong”

I start with a pump organ, an instrument already used in the past – as in the start of “Untitled” from “Disintegration”, one of Smith’s favorite Cure songs – then drums, guitars and various sound effects enter. The song was born from the cyclical conflicts and reconciliations that Smith says he had with a person, wondering if this is what men are made of, continuous personal wars. Just over 4 minutes, one of the shortest songs on the album.


“Drone: Nodrone”

A distorted bass, the drums; the “drone” referred to in the title is the one spotted above the singer’s house: the song, explains Smith, was born from the frustration generated by the intrusive nature and continuous surveillance of the contemporary world. This is why it is the angriest song on the album, even musically, punctuated by a piercing electric guitar that chases Smith’s voice for the entire song, 4 and a half minutes.


“I can never say goodbye”

The piano is preceded by the sound of a storm, then the drums forcefully enter, for another long 2 minute intro. The song is the mourning for the death of Robert Smith’s brother: the music was written immediately after his death while the words, he says, arrived only after some time and are the story of their last evening together: “Something wicked this way comes/To steal away my brother’s life/I could never say goodbye”. Smith says that singing this song live helped him overcome his grief: in videos of the performances he is often emotional.


“All I ever Am”

Drums and synths, then guitars, with a relatively short intro, 1 and a half minutes. Smith defines it as a song about self-acceptance, about realizing that you are a sum of multitudes, of ghosts, dreams, memories and hopes that come to define the present self.


“Endsong”

Another familiar-sounding intro of drums, synths and guitars: the record ends as it began, with a sister song to “Alone”. Here too there is a long instrumental intro that almost lasts 6 minutes, and the theme of disorientation, of feeling lost and of growing old in an increasingly complex and broken world: “And I’m outside in the dark/ Staring at the blood red moon/ Remembering the hopes and dreams I had/All I had to do/And wondering what became of that boy/And the world he called his own/And I’m outside in the dark/Wondering how I got so old”.

On the tour it closed the band’s main set, on the album it is a 10-minute masterpiece, which ends with Smith repeating “Left alone with nothing at the end of every song/Left alone with nothing” on a distorted guitar and insistent drums.

From Robert



WARSONG

And another interesting anonymous work of art from this artist for @heartresearchuk. Third of five.

Artist: Anonymous 😉
Title: WARSONG



5 stars from Classic Pop

Classic Pop gives Songs of a Lost World a 5 star review.
Thanks WitchHouse Raver.


Wednesday, October 9, 2024

4 star review for Songs of a Lost World

The Cure: Songs of a Lost World track by track review – Majestically desolate, gorgeously grim

Robert Smith is at the height of his melancholic powers on The Cure’s first album since 2008

1: Alone 

The lead single had already created a buzz among Cure fans, with a feeling that the band might be back to their best following 4:13 Dream, their going-through-the-motions let-down from 2008. (“Happy and comfortable”, Pitchfork commented, scathingly.) Here Smith is at his most epically introspective – that’s when he finally turns up, cresting a crestfallen riff at three minutes and 30 seconds. It’s slow, sad and brilliant, while the lyrics offer a signpost to the angst to follow as Smith declares, “This is the end of every song we sing. The fire burned out to ash, the stars grown dim with tears.”

2: And Nothing Is Forever
Another shiver-inducing six-minute-plus dirge begins with strings and piano and a zigging guitar from Reeves Gabrels, the former David Bowie sideman who joined The Cure in 2012. The vibe is autumnal, while propulsive drum fills by Jason Cooper suggest Phil Collins drifting through deep space. The temperature is further lowered by Smith’s vocals, which arrive two minutes and 50 seconds in and are addressed to a loved one out of reach. “I know that my world is growing old,” he laments. “Promise you’ll be with me in the end.”

3: A Fragile Thing
The bassist Simon Gallup is out front as the LP gathers pace with a squalling goth workout that taps into the dread of Cure classics such as A Forest. We’re joining Smith at a challenging time – lockdown blues, perhaps? – as he wonders if it is his destiny to feel isolated and blue. “All this time alone has left me hurt and sad and lost,” he says.

4: Warsong
There are echoes of The Cure’s adored hit Lovesong in this shimmering and very 1980s affair, on which Smith’s amorphous guitar conjures with Pink Floyd and Cocteau Twins. It starts with a sustained droning note, overlaid with a glitchy guitar. The lyrics are a cheerful interpolation of Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. Only joking: it’s back to the record’s themes of isolation and creeping dread as Smith tells somebody close in his life that “we tell each other lies to hide the truth”. Someone needs a hug – and it’s you, the listener.

5: Drone No Drone
The Cure summon the spirit of their acolytes Nine Inch Nails on a rare high-tempo number that features the closest thing on the LP to a singalong chorus, as Smith chants “Down, down, down ... Yeah ... I’m pretty much done.” Please don’t say that, Robert – there are three more songs to go!

6: I Can Never Say Goodbye
Smith takes his time again on a six-minute-plus tune that is mainly about the lugubrious guitar and frosty keyboard. But when the singer materialises, two-plus minutes in, he has a lot to get off his chest on a howling ballad that directly addresses the death of his brother. “There’s nowhere left to hide ... Down on my knees, empty inside,” Smith cries. “Something wicked this way comes, sealing away my brother’s life – I can never say goodbye.” This unflinching mediation on loss is perhaps the album’s starkest moment (and, yes, that is saying a lot).

7: All I Ever Am
The funereal pace picks up slightly amid stacks of buzzing guitar and a chunky riff that recalls New Order circa their 1985 LP Low-Life (in turn heavily inspired by The Cure). You could almost sing along to it – if it weren’t for lyrics that want to cry on your shoulder (“all I ever am is never quite all I am”).

8: Endsong
The Cure opened Disintegration, their best album – Smith, at least, considers it their masterpiece – with the magisterial Plainsong. Now, with the 10-minute Endsong, they attempt the same feat in reverse via a slow, throbbing howl of a song in which Smith, who is now 65, confronts the ageing process only to find that it’s confronting him right back. “I’m outside in the dark ... wondering how I got so old,” he sings. “It’s all gone ... nothing left ... all I loved.” Like so much else on this extraordinary album, it’s hugely moving – but the darkness is at moments overwhelming. It’s also a fitting conclusion to an LP that has no rainbows or silver linings – just endless rain clouds and the constant threat of another thunderstorm.

Read more of the review at the Irish Times.

Video of Robert talking about A Fragile Thing

Robert on A Fragile Thing

From The Quietus:

The Cure have unveiled a new song from much-anticipated new album Songs Of A Lost World. ‘A Fragile Thing’ is described by Robert Smith as “the ‘love song’ of the album, but it’s not really a love song in the way that ‘Lovesong’ is a love song… it’s about how Love is the most enduring of emotions, the most powerful of emotions, incredibly resilient… and yet at the same time incredibly fragile… [it] is driven by the difficulties we face in choosing between mutually exclusive needs and how we deal with the futile regret that can follow these choices, however sure we are that the right choices have been made… it can often be very hard to be the person that you really need to be.”

Official tracklist

 From the official site:

01 /ALONE

02 /AND NOTHING IS FOREVER

03 /A FRAGILE THING

04 /WARSONG

05 /DRONE:NODRONE

06 /I CAN NEVER SAY GOODBYE

07 /ALL I EVER AM

08 / ENDSONG

A Fragile Thing (lyric video)

A Fragile Thing on Jo Wiley tonight

Curepedia event

Tickets 

A Fragile Thing update

From HispaCure:

En plataformas (spotify, apple music...) a las 21.00 horas (España) El sencillo viene con "Video Lyric".

El single, en formato físico, a la venta en noviembre, solo se podrá comprar vía web.

#THECURE RELEASES NEW SINGLE "A FRAGILE THING" TODAY (09.10)

On platforms (spotify, apple music...) at 9:00 p.m. (Spain) The single comes with a "Lyric Video".

The single, in physical format, on sale in November, can only be purchased online.