Album update from Robert

The L.A. Times have a new interview with Robert, and he gives them an update about the new album:

How far along are you on a new Cure album?
We’re going back in [the studio] three days after we get back from Pasadena for me to try and finish the vocals, which is, as ever, what’s holding up the album. I keep going back over and redoing them, which is silly. At some point, I have to say that’s it.

Has this been in the works for a long time or did you suddenly get to a point where it all came out at once?
I was offered the chance to curate the Meltdown Festival [in London] and I said yes. And then I realized I didn’t really listen to very much new music anymore. So I threw myself headlong into it and started listening to bands again and meeting kids who were in bands, and something clicked inside my head: I want to do this again. It came as a bit of a shock to me, to be honest. No one really believed me until we started recording.

Is there anything from your history that you would compare this new album to?
It’s very much on the darker side of the spectrum. I lost my mother and my father and my brother recently, and obviously it had an effect on me. It’s not relentlessly doom and gloom. It has soundscapes on it, like “Disintegration,” I suppose. I was trying to create a big palette, a big wash of sound.

Do you have a title?
The working title was “Live From the Moon,” because I was enthralled by the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landing in the summer. We had a big moon hanging in the studio and lunar-related stuff lying around. I’ve always been a stargazer.

In the past, when the Cure released an album, you’ve said the band was going to retire. How are you feeling this time?
Being the contrarian that I am, I’d be very unhappy if it was the last one. We’ll be onstage tomorrow and I’ll be saying to them, “This is the last time in Paris,” and they’ll look at me and shrug their shoulders. At some point, I will be proved right.

Read the rest at the L.A. Times.