The Cure – Songs of a Lost World
Perennial gloomsters The Cure are back to their majestic, melancholy best on Songs of a Lost World, their first album in 16 years
★★★★★
Album Review by Lewis Wade
Robert Smith starts at the end for The Cure's first album in 16 years. 'This is the end / Of every song that we sing' is the cheery opening line, and a repeated refrain of 'nothing' closes things some 50 minutes later (the full line is 'Left alone with nothing / The end of every song'). It's safe to say that the godfathers of gloom haven't altered their disposition in the intervening years, and we're all the better for it.
Songs of a Lost World is a true return to the desolate beauty of their 80s heyday. The opening pair of songs, Alone and And Nothing Is Forever, could've fit neatly onto Disintegration with their lengthy introductions (vocals rarely appear earlier than two minutes into any song), the cinematic sweep of the keys and guitar, Smith's languishing laments, the way beauty is eked out of the darkest corners.
Smith wrote, composed and arranged the whole album, something he only did previously on The Head On the Door. And though Songs may be lacking an earworm like In Between Days, the sonic blueprint is just as cohesive as the 1985 classic. The band's collective strengths are brought to the fore on each perfectly constructed ode to grief, memory and impermanence; the plaintive piano of I Can Never Say Goodbye, the screeching guitars of Warsong and Endsong, the martial percussive bounce of Drone:Nodrone.
These songs were written against a backdrop of family bereavement (I Can Never Say Goodbye is as poignant as it is heartbreaking), but Smith's reckoning with time and mortality is never self-pitying. Rather, he can view his nihilistic tendencies in the fullness of experience; love may be a fragile thing, but it's ultimately worth the pain it can cause.
