Review 1: The Cure - Songs of the Lost World

#50 The Cure, Songs of a Lost World (2024) from Billboard's top 50 albums of 2024.

This is the first album from The Cure and Robert Smith, since 2008's release of 4:13 Dream. With full disclosure, one of my favorite albums of all time is Disintegration, or how I describe that album as a "bittersweet album to off yourself". Disintegration is a visceral album that forces you to feel melancholy and will depress the happiest person who ever lived.

So let's listen to the album tracks of "Songs of a Lost World" and see what happens, since I really haven't listened to The Cure for at least 15 years. My taste in music has radically changed since 1989's Disintegration, so let's see what happens:

Skip the song reviews and go to the overall album thoughts

1. Alone

Programmed drums & synth. Feels like a long walk in the dark on the Scottish moors; cold, dried heather and a wide open landscape. Interesting to start the album with what feels like a nearly 7 minute instrumental, but at 3:20 Smith's lyrics come in. "This is the end of every song that I sing". hopes and dreams are gone, the end of every song" is despairing and sweetly cynical picture of our world.

A courageous 3+ minute introduction since nearly every song written in the past 10 years skips the intro yet the 3:20 minutes sets the stage nicely. No bridge. The song knows what it's about, it doesn't have to go anywhere it doesn't want to go.

2. And Nothing is Forever

Piano & synth strings - nice long intro again is so refreshing. The lyrics reflect upon growing old and the futility of life and love against time. "If you promise to be with me in the end". This one's going on my "songs to play at my wake" playlist. I feel like this is a reflection upon mortality.

3. A Fragile Thing

More rock, heavy bass & drums. Half step tension in the chord selection. The mix balances the bass/drums and vocals well though the vocals are behind a little - some old school mixing here. Guitar solo is a nice touch.

4. Warsong

Interesting rhythmic textures with echo's between the left and right. Again a long intro, with harsh guitar and pizzicato violin plucking. Lyrics start around 2 minutes in. "We tell each other lies to hide the truth and hate ourselves with everything we do" cut to the bone. Very much a wall of sound relegated to the anguish being felt. Very much in the "Disintegration" vein.

5. Drone: Nodrone

Hard mechanical rhythm and bass. The shortest intro so far on the album 1:08. Different than any of the other songs so far. Perhaps a different writer? It almost sounds out of place. Another guitar solo this time with wawa pedal and a bit of harshness. The bass almost sounds like it comes from a Tool song. Industrial pop? Interesting.

6. I can Never Say Goodbye

Opens with thunder and piano and there's the Tool bass. Long intro 2:22.

A song I interpret to be about loss, "Something this way comes to from out of the cruel and treacherous night, Something wicked this way comes to steal away my brother's life". Guitar solo. Love the breakdown after the solo, there's no rush to get to the end of the song. The use of the Ray Bradbury 1962 dark fantasy title "Something Wicked this Way Comes" is somehow satisfying.

7. All I Ever Am

A more power pop version of a standard Cure song. The prose is very introspective. "Of all the ghosts, and all the dreams All I hold to in belief, That all I ever am, Is somehow never quite all I am now".

More than the music, the lyrics create a ennui and inevitability of darkness. Countering the pop-ish music, the lyrics are perhaps the darkest of the album so far.

8. Endsong

The 10:23 minute finale. Synth, tom tom rhythm's almost sound military. Layer upon layer is added, first bass, then guitar and then another guitar, then chimes, then tamborine. The longest droning instrumental beginning that keeps going until 6:19 into the song. Perhaps the most depressing of the songs on the album. "No hopes, no dreams , no world, no I don't belong, I don't belong here anymore, It's all gone" Smith is predicting his own demise it seems.

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Overall thoughts:

A very dark album. Gone are the melancholy pop songs of the past like "Boys don't cry" or any enthusiasm for the future. It's very stark landscape painted by Smith. If you've ever watched a 2009 movie called "The Road" with Viggo Mortensen, this is the musical version of that movie. I can't help but think of "This is the end" by the Doors. Even in Disintegration there was a little hope a little light a little to look forward to with "Pictures of You" and "Lovesong" something upbeat to offset the melancholy. This album has none of that. It's all bleak. It's all dark. It's all lonely. Everything is nothing.

This is a very lyrically driven album. The words, not the beats, not the effects, not the guitar layers or mixing are the key to feeling the music.

To me this sounds like goodbye from Robert Smith. It reminds me of a goodbye letter of someone terminally ill, who, while they can, writes down their last thoughts before embarking into the void.

I would not recommend this album to anyone off their depression meds, or who are not considering a future. This is a dark sequel to Disintegration where the end is empty. It forces you to feel. It forces you to recognize mortality and the possibility of nothing at the end.

Stand out songs were "Alone", "Nothing is Forever" and "I Can Never Say Goodbye". I'm off to pop a few Prozac and take a nap.

Rating 7/10