The Cure, ‘Songs of a Lost World’: Album Review

The long path to the Cure‘s 14th album, and the first in 16 years since the release of 4:13 Dream, has been marked by occasional live performances, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction and another lineup change. Songs of a Lost World was in the planning stages for more than a decade and was first scheduled for release in 2019; so if expectations fluttered somewhere between cautious anticipation and nervous apprehension, the good news is that the finally delivered record is worth the delay.

Where 2008’s 4:13 Dream often seemed to play like the Cure’s greatest hits without the hits, Songs of a Lost World is something different: a summation of a career that sounds like both a progression and a milestone. It’s familiar in parts, but these moments serve as reminders of just how adept and intrinsic Robert Smith and the band are at reaching atmospheric highs (often at six or more minutes) and then sustaining that momentum throughout a record.

The subtleness with which the Cure assembles the eight songs befits Songs of a Lost World‘s main themes, which mostly deal with loss and mortality. Smith, now 65, announced before the album’s release that he plans to retire in five years; Songs of a Lost World is mournful but it only occasionally sounds like the end of something. It may be a stretch to call this a new beginning, but the Cure hasn’t been this compelling on record in more than three decades.

“This is the end of every song that we sing” are the opening words on the album – nearly three and a half minutes into “Alone” and the halfway mark of the song – and they begin this record of deep introspection with notes of grace and elegance. “And Nothing Is Forever” continues the theme as a slow-building dirge that reaches a moment of peace by the end of its seven minutes; “A Fragile Thing,” meanwhile, repeats “Nothing you can do to change the end” as a sort of mantra.

Several of the songs were previewed during a lengthy 2023 tour, but the band – returning members Simon Gallup (bass), Jason Cooper (drums) and Roger O’Donnell (keyboards), and former David Bowie guitarist Reeves Gabrels, with the Cure for more than a decade but making his recorded debut with them here – sounds perfectly comfortable with them in this setting, whether it’s the psychedelic wah guitar of “Drone:nodrone” or the midtempo “All I Ever Am,” which could be a lost cut from the early ’90s. “I’m outside in the dark wondering how I got so old,” Smith sings in the 10-minute closing track, “Endsong,” “I will lose myself in time.” It’s a fitting conclusion to Songs of a Lost World and, depending on where Smith plans to go next, maybe the Cure.