The Cure – Songs of A Lost World (Fiction, Lost, Polydor, Universal, Capitol)
The band close their five decade-long history on what is likely to be their final studio album: their fourteenth release, recorded at the famous Rockfield studios, is heavily instrumental, with band founder and frontman Robert Smith’s vocals entering later into each track. The loud, industrial percussive production seen on intro track ‘Alone’ is peppered with synth washes and guitar effects; boldly surrendering, “This is the end of every song that we sing” with Smith’s pining out in the darkness, “Where did it go?” making it particularly apocalyptically tragic. The album develops in this vein throughout touching on the themes of death, loss, love and ultimate destruction, such as in ‘A Fragile Thing’, written about the pain of heartbreak and containing a medley of instrumentation with a haunting classical piano riff throughout.
The best part of the album begins, however, on ‘Warsong’: it replicates the industrial sound of war; its machinations produced by wrenching and seething guitars sithing through heavily treading militarised drums with Smith’s vocals bitterly reaching out from above the chaos – a piece that comments so starkly on the times we currently live in; it’s short but extremely powerful. ‘Drone:Ndrone’ is a dark descent into the lucid experience of depression with a beating rhythm section and guitar screeches. ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’, lyrically reminiscent of ‘Wish’s ‘From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea’, continues the rhythm against a staccato keyboard riff with gritty twisted guitars coming later in the song; a gothic pathetic fallacy first played on a live tour date in 2022 following the death of Smith’s older brother, Richard, who was so much a musical influence on him growing up.
The album draws to a close on the boozy guitar of ‘All I Ever Am’, with long medley bridges containing flashes of post-punk chimes between vocal verses; the smashing drumbeats beckon the impending doom of old age as Smith hopelessly reflects on the culmination of life – such extraordinary and intimate lyrics have probably never been put to paper. The percussive beats follow through into closing outro piece, ‘Endsong’; at 10.23 minutes it is the longest track on the album: mostly instrumental, it travels with clattering drumbeats amongst a noise medley before Smith’s vocals come in over halfway through, collapsing (perhaps a bit melodramatically) on the revelation that “It’s all gone”; echoing ‘Alone’ he mourns he is, “Left alone with nothing at the end of every song”. Whilst the album is fragmented and leaves the listener yearning for more, it is the darkest, and at times even putridly disturbing, composition this band have probably ever brought forth. A candid exploration of Smith’s legacy and the ephemerality of existence as he exits the material world.
‘Songs of A Lost World’ is out now on vinyl, CD, cassette and digitally.
© Ayisha Khan.