From The Spectator:
The life-affirming misery of the Cure
No one does bleakness better than Robert Smith
By Tanith Carey
Watching the Cure’s live-streamed performance of their first album in 16 years, it was hard not to notice the toll time has taken on Robert Smith. At 65, his black spiky hair has long turned into a bedhead of fag-ash grey – a reminder to those of us who have grown up with him that none of us are as young as we used to be.
As the slow waltz of the first track of Songs of a Lost World kicked in, and Smith wailed ‘Where did it go?’, it was starting to look like a very gloomy evening indeed – even by the standards of a band hardly known for its cheeriness.
I’ll admit that as I started to watch the Troxy gig live from my sofa, even I, as a long-time Cure fan, worried how dark it was going to get. And sure enough, along came seven more songs covering the death of loved ones, ageing, regret and fear for the future.
Many of Smith’s fans have grown up with him – and now he speaks for those of us who are looking in the mirror also ‘wondering how I got so old’
But then, along the way, something else happened too. Despite all the lyrics about endings, goodbyes and losses, the momentum kept building, propelled by pounding drums and shimmering guitar cadences. By the three heartfelt ‘nothings’ of ‘Endsong’ that finally brought the record to a close, it all felt strangely cathartic. Radiant, even.
And it seems I’m not the only one who felt this way. After its release at the start of November, the undeniably bleak Songs of a Lost World became one of the fastest-selling albums of 2024, at one point outselling the entire rest of the top ten of the week combined. So how did the launch of this gloomy LP become one of the defining musical moments of the year?
For me, the power of Smith’s music lies in the fact that it manages to be just so gloriously miserable. Many of his fans have grown up with him – and now he speaks for those of us who are looking in the mirror also ‘wondering how I got so old’ when we don’t feel a day over 21. And as he – and his audience – grow older, stories of heartbreak of all kinds become even more heartfelt. We’ve known him long enough to trust him to be a comforting conduit for our sadness with tracks like ‘Plainsong’ and ‘From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea’.
What is also poignant about this record is that if you close your eyes, Smith’s voice is as undiminished as when we first played cassette tapes of the Cure in our teenage bedrooms and sung along about being in love on Fridays. The songs themselves might not offer much by way of escapism, but that voice does.
There’s also something comforting about the fact that Smith, who released the first Cure record in 1979, remains resolutely un-rockstar-ish. While other musicians pronounce on world peace, when the Cure last headlined Glastonbury in 2019, Smith joked that he was going for the record for the frontman who said the least at the festival – and true to his word, he did nothing but sing for the first 45 minutes. He seems to have taken the ageing process in his stride and is happiest taking walks around his land to check on his sheep. He can’t even be bothered to own a phone, saying that the only reason he’s on social media is so no one else can pretend to be him.
So perhaps it could only be Robert Smith who could make the exact record we need at the crossroads we are facing at the start of 2025 – utterly bleak, oh yes, but beautiful and brilliant too. I believe the secret of the success of Songs of a Lost World is that after listening to it, some of us feel less alone with our worries. After all these years, no one does misery better – and there’s a comfort in that
