The Cure, back after 16 years, made the best rock…
Let’s face it: For most of 2024, for many of current reminiscence, rock music has been useless.
But simply as the Day of the Dead is upon us, the Cure has introduced the style back to life.
The goth gods — who had been left for useless after not releasing a new studio LP since 2008’s “4:13 Dream” — have come back after 16 long years with the best rock album of 2024: “Songs of a Lost World,” which fittingly dropped the day after Halloween.
At 65, Robert Smith faces his own mortality — and his grief about misplaced family members — on “Songs of a Lost World.”
It’s Friday, and I’m in love with the Cure throughout again.
“Songs of a Lost World” is definitely the Cure’s best album since 1992’s “Wish” — which included their hit “Friday I’m in Love” — however possibly even since their 1989 masterpiece (*16*)
That’s saying a entire helluva lot for a band that didn’t owe us anything — and will’ve simply coasted alongside on the well-deserved Rock & Roll Hall of Fame props they earned in 2019.
After all, like many legendary rock bands of a sure age, they have been nonetheless promoting out arenas on the nostalgic power of their golden oldies.
On “Songs of a Lost World,” these alt-rock icons have staged the very unlikely revivals simply once they had nothing to lose.
The eight-track “Songs” is a revelation in an period the place actual albums don’t exist anymore. There are no apparent “singles” right here — the variety that noticed the Cure hit the Top 40 with “Just Like Heaven,” “Lovesong” and “Friday I’m in Love.”
On the Cure’s newest, Robert Smith’s tortured, tremulous wail hasn’t misplaced any of its power in its capability to specific fragility.
But it’s an album that lets you get misplaced in its otherworld for 49 minutes that received’t have you ever merely skipping to the subsequent monitor.
It’s an album that’s meant — make that, calls for — to be skilled from begin to end.
With its orchestral grandeur — these dense, painstakingly detailed preparations may make you perceive why it took 16 years — “Songs” performs like a symphony in eight actions, taking you on a journey that begins and ends with symmetric echoes.
“This is the end of every song that we sing,” croons Robert Smith — the Cure’s mascara-eyed frontman — at the starting of “Alone,” the opener that units the moody temper of the album with alluring atmospherics that hark back to (*16*)
“Songs of a Lost World” is the Cure’s first new studio album since 2008’s “4:13 Dream.”
“Alone” is bookended by “Endsong,” which brings the album to a 360 end: “Left alone with nothing/The end of every song” earlier than one closing “Nothing.”
It’s a traditional Cure nearer that brings you to a closing vacation spot, which is all the things.
Amid an enrapturing soundscape — full with cascading drums that put you in a rhythmic twist to go together with the emotional one — the epic “Endsong” doesn’t even get a peep from Smith over six minutes into its 10-plus minutes.
Like many of the songs on “Songs of a Lost World,” it takes its bittersweet time unfolding, stretching and swelling out to a luxurious splendor. It is likely to be annoying if it wasn’t so absorbing.
Robert Smith and the Cure have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center in 2019. Getty Images For The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
As the title suggests, the album is a goth-rock reflection on loss: loss of family members, loss of youth, loss of idealism, loss of hope.
“I know, I know that my world has grown old,” sings Smith on “And Nothing Is Forever,” going through his own mortality at 65.
His tortured, tremulous wail hasn’t misplaced any of its power in its capability to specific fragility.
“I’m pretty much done/Staring down the barrel of the same warm gun,” a defeated Smith sings on the “Never Enough”-esque “Drone:Nodrone.” One of the more uptempo tracks on this downbeat affair — no shock there — it has a grunge edge with its grinding, winding guitars.
If there have been to be a “single,” this may be it.
Robert Smith and his band of macabre males, the Cure, have gotten their goth groove back. Getty Images
But “I Can Never Say Goodbye” — a haunting, heartbreaking ode to Smith’s late brother Richard — is the grief-ridden soul of “Songs of a Lost World.”
“Something wicked this way comes/To steal away my brother’s life,” sings Smith.
Those sorrowful strings tug away at the tatters of any worn-out spirit.
It’s a cathartic magnificence and energy that the Cure has, in opposition to all odds, discovered again.
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