Boys will cry about this one. Following the news of Oasis, Linkin Park, and Jane’s Addiction reuniting, The Cure returns with their first single after sixteen years, followed by a release date for a new album.
I have been a huge fan of The Cure for as long as I can remember. So when they decided to finally release a new single on a gloomy autumn day after teasing for what seemed like years via cryptic internet posts, I was over the moon. Not everyone can appreciate the band’s unique, atmospheric melodies, melancholic themes and heart wrenching lyrics, but that is what makes them as iconic as they are.
Songs of a Lost World, which is confirmed to release on November 1, will be The Cure’s first album since 2008’s 4:13 Dream. However, the news of the album does not come as a surprise. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, lead singer Robert Smith teased that the band was at work recording 19 songs, and planned to release the album on Halloween of that year, which they ultimately failed to do. Five years later, the group is confident and excited to finally get the long-awaited album out to the world. The album title Songs of a Lost World is a reflection of the name of the band’s 2023 tour, Shows of a Lost World, during which they played a few unreleased songs from the album in Madison Square Garden, NY.
“If I have one regret, it’s that I said anything at all about it in 2019, because we had just started creating it,” Smith said in a recent video post on Instagram. The group also released their first single last Thursday titled “Alone,” which is the first track on the album.
“I had been struggling to find the right opening line for the right opening song for a while, working with the simple idea of ‘being alone,” Smith said in a press release.
Smith also shared the inspiration for the single as well as the literary connections he made with the song’s lyrics.
“Always in the back of my mind this nagging feeling that I already knew what the opening line should be,” he said. “As soon as we finished recording, I remembered the poem ‘Dregs’ by the English poet Ernest Dowson and it was in that moment that I knew the song and the album were real.”
“Alone” is melancholy but also beautiful and grand, which is typical for the 80’s gothic rock band. The song begins with a three-minute instrumental of magical synths, layered guitars, and metallic drum tones leading up to Smith’s emotional and raw vocals beginning with the lyrics “This is the end of every song that we sing/ The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears/ Cold and afraid, the ghosts of all that we’ve been/ We toast with bitter dregs to our emptiness.”
Fans of the band should not be disappointed, as it is clear that The Cure are back more than ever with doom and gloom.
On October 9, the band released another single titled “A Fragile Thing” which is the third song on the album. “A Fragile Thing” and the new single “Alone” bring an atmosphere similar to the band’s 1989 album “Disintegration,” a classic for the group. Though it is exciting when bands and artists debut with works that display a fresh sound, it is comforting to know that some icons will never change.
Fans can expect the usual dark, but melodic sound from the upcoming album, as proven by the pre-released songs.
“It’s very much on the darker side of the spectrum,” Smith said in an interview with Los Angeles Times. “I lost my mother and my father and my brother recently, and obviously it had an effect on me.”
The band encourages fans to preorder the new album and to listen to a preview of “Endsong,” another new track on the album. To gain access to this track, visit songsofalost.world and enter the album release date in roman numerals : I. XI. MMXXIV.
