It feels more than a little intimidating to write a review of a record by The CURE. They’ve been around for over 45 years. This is their first album in 16 years. I haven’t heard most of their post-“Wish” output. If I had taken my wife’s maiden name, I would be Robert Smith. I don’t want to be jumping someone else’s train, you know? But, I started this blog to get in the habit of writing regularly, and that means there are times where my expertise is not fully developed. If it were, I’d sticking only to what I know best and anxiously trying to prove my authority with every post. That’s too much. I just want to get some ideas out of my mind and onto the screen because I’m tired of these thoughts having nowhere else to go. I may not be able to give you authority, but I can give you honesty.
If I’m not an expert at The CURE’s back catalog and career arc, then consider that I am an expert at experiencing the kinds of emotions they engender with their music. I’m really good at feeling bad. There’s a moment in Ordinary People where Conrad Jarrett is struggling with the suicide of a friend and says to his therapist, “I feel bad about this! I feel really, really bad about this! Just let me feel bad about this!” I’m well past the age where I should look to teenage movie protagonists as role models, but there's a black cloud that still hangs over my head sometimes. To wit, when I was first learning about The CURE, I asked my older sister if she had any of their albums around. It was at a point after we’d both moved out of our parents’ home and were back to visit for a summer weekend. She said, “The CURE… you graduated high school, right?” Sure did. Sure still feel like I could use some sonic medicine in the form of The CURE, even now.
So, it was exciting to me to see on Apple Music (of all places!) that one of the Top Songs in recent weeks was “Alone” by The CURE. This is how I found out they had a new album out. Not a text or conversation or call from a friend. Not an email from a mailing list. Not a news alert on my phone. Not in the music section of a local paper, alt newsweekly, music website, or zine. From the list of songs on this app on my phone, in a section I had never even perused before. I gave it a listen and thought it was pretty fucking great. I was surprised for a minute at the thought that there had not already been a song of theirs with the title “Alone.” It’s a title you would come up with if you wanted to parody them. Thankfully, it’s just as dead serious as the rest of their most maudlin soundscapes. I mean, we get more than three minutes of trudging through the bass, synths, keys, drums, and glacial guitars before the opening line “This is the end / of every song that we sing.” It sounds so stupid to write it out like that but the magic works just like it does for “Plainsong” or “Push” or “The Kiss” or any other song of theirs with that pulls you in and under as it goes through the riff motions. It’s exactly what I expected and I couldn’t be happier. There are at least three other songs on here with these kinds of intros and each casts that same enchanting spell. They know just what they are doing and we can just lie back in wonder.
Truly, this is a record best experienced while reclining or supine. I can’t tell you how many nights I have drifted away into unconsciousness listening to “Disintegration.” It was most frequent immediately after the end of a relationship in my early 20s, which is a sentiment so clichéd and cringey, I almost don’t want to write it down out of sheer embarrassment. I first owned their 1989 masterpiece on cassette and later upgraded to CD. I eventually found a copy of the LP but did not keep it for long. Even though vinyl is the gold standard for music consumption, it did not work for me. For one, the LP is missing “Last Dance” and “Homesick,” so it’s incomplete in some sense. More importantly, my turntable doesn’t have an auto-shutoff, so falling asleep to the needle hitting the paper doesn’t work. Still, it’s one of only a few albums I ever liked enough to own on all three formats. (Two others that come to mind are BEYOND’s “No Longer at Ease” and METALLICA’s “Master of Puppets.”) Although the days of pumping music throughout my bedroom or apartment on my stereo while lying in bed are long since gone, I anticipate slipping into sleep to the sounds of “Songs of a Lost World” on earbuds in the weeks and months to come.
I bring up “Disintegration” because it’s obligatory to mention that album when discussing The CURE and because “Songs of a Lost World” also cannot measure up to it. As much as I want to bathe in the sounds of this album, I can’t help but notice the keyboards are a little thin. This holds true for both the streaming sounds and those coming out of the LP through my home stereo’s speakers. I can’t say whether it’s the pressing or something with the recording, but it sometimes feels that what should be a downpour is more of a drizzle. You may remember that the liner notes of “Disintegration” inform you that “This music has been mixed to be played loud so turn it up.” There’s no equivalent phrase here. At 49 minutes, it does seem a little long for a single album. There’s a double-LP version, too, but the comments on Discogs make glad that I have other things to worry about in my life than whether the brand new album I bought is pristinely, flawlessly perfect. I can’t imagine asking for a fucking refund because of shit like that.
As I mentioned with the opening line to the lead track, the lyrics have no surprises in store. That is fine! It’s what I want. Hearing a line like “oh I know I know / that my world is grown old / and nothing is forever” (from the second song) may have hit me plenty hard 20 or so years ago. It hits even harder now, knowing that the person singing it is 65 years old. There’s some weight behind those words that wasn’t there before. The same could be said for “don’t tell me how you miss me / I could die tonight of a broken heart” from “A Fragile Thing.” That is just the kind of lyric that sounds ridiculous out of context (and even maybe in context) but it still works. Music is magical that way. They work the magic in a rhythmically on “Drone: Nodrone,” which leads off side two. It’s got the funky, distorted bass of “Screw” or “Fight,” lest you think this album’s tone is as monochromatic as its cover. There’s a song about the death of Smith’s brother, which is a new type of heartbreak that rings as true as anything else explored here or on preceding albums. The closer, “Endsong,” (yes, another “song” song!) is, again, exactly what I want and expect. Its sounds wash over you for more than six minutes before the vocals begin. The lyrics are a form of dead reckoning. Where have I been, and what did it mean? “Outside in the dark / left alone with nothing” as the matrix etchings tell us. If this is their endsong, it’s quite a way to go out.
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