The Cure: Songs of a Lost World review – dark, personal and their best since Disintegration
(Fiction)
The band are at an artistic peak on their first album in 16 years: movingly melancholic, with a punchy sound to match the lyrics’ emotional impact
The latter-day history of the Cure is a peculiar thing. They ended the 90s in apparent disarray – the disappointing Wild Mood Swings drew their peak commercial years to a close, and a series of festival shows degenerated into drunken farce – yet the 21st century found them more revered than ever. You couldn’t move for younger artists paying homage: everyone from heavy metal bands to dance producers seemed to want to collaborate with frontman Robert Smith.
It was a kind of renaissance, and evidence of how hugely influential they were, but the Cure seemed unable to fully capitalise on it. They could always draw vast crowds, but a new album to rank alongside their back catalogue’s high points proved frustratingly elusive, and you wondered how many people were at their gigs to hear stuff from their eponymous 2004 album or 2008’s 4:13 Dream, both sprawling and uneven. Thereafter, their gigs came flecked with new songs but the release schedule fell silent. Last year, Simon Price’s definitive book Curepedia opened its entry on a prospective new album with the not unreasonable question: “Will it ever happen?”
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