The Cure’s ‘Songs of a Lost World’ review: All 8 songs ranked

“And Nothing is Forever” is perhaps the most conventionally beautiful song on the album, with its gentle opening passage of plaintive piano chords and sweeping synth strings. But conventional beauty has never really been what The Cure does best. The song is so slow it’s downright funereal, which is fitting considering the lyrics.

“’And Nothing is Forever’ is about a promise I made to someone who was very ill, that I would be with him when he died. And I wasn’t. And because it wasn’t, I wrote the song,” Smith explained in a 100-minute video interview released two weeks before the album. The Cure has long favored long instrumental intros – consider how ‘Fascination Street’ created a groove for over two minutes before Smith opened his mouth. Songs of a lost worldHowever, John takes that approach to new extremes, with several songs saving all the lyrics for the second half of the song.

Bassist Simon Gallup is the longest-tenured Cure member alongside Robert Smith. He’s been with the band since 1979, with the exception of 18 months in the mid-’80s, and an odd two-month stint in 2021 when he announced, and then walked back, another departure from the Cure. Gallup’s booming basslines have always been a key part of the Cure’s signature sound, but his heavily distorted bass takes center stage in the mix. Songs of a lost world like never before.

This is evident on ‘All I Ever Am’, in which Gallup plays a very catchy melody that would probably have been played on piano on an ’80s Cure album. A large part of the album will appeal to fans who saw The Cure during their Shows of a Lost World tour in 2023 already seems familiar. However, “All I Ever Am” was one of three songs not previewed during the tour, along with “ Warsong” and “Drone:Nodrone.”

“Endsong” is one of two song titles on Lost worldtogether with ‘Warsong’, which immediately brings to mind ‘Plainsong’ and ‘Lovesong’ Disintegrationwith the latter being the Cure’s biggest US hit, reaching No. 2 on the Hot 100. With a running time of over 10 minutes, “Endsong” is the second-longest studio song in the Cure catalog, beaten only by the 11- minute “Watching Me Fall” from the 2000s Blood flowers. The tambourine handclaps and drum machine give “Endsong” a more polyrhythmic churn than the rest of the album, as the song slowly builds to Smith’s voice, which arrives just over six minutes into the song.

“Endsong” certainly feels like it could be a curtain call for the Cure’s entire career, but that’s not Smith’s plan. In his interview to promote the album, Smith revealed that the band is working on two more new albums, one of which is “pretty much done.”

“Alone” has opened virtually every Cure concert since 2022, and in September it became the first new Cure studio track released in more than a decade. What’s most striking about the song, and what caused a wave of excitement among the Cure’s diehard fanbase, is how little the seven-minute track sounds like a lead single. “Alone” is a strong statement of intent that the album is for the fans, not radio programmers. There’s a brutal physicality to the way Jason Cooper, The Cure’s drummer since 1995, pounds his snare drum and toms on ‘Alone’, but it’s a stately and graceful song, with a hauntingly descending triplet figure played on piano and guitar .

American guitarist Reeves Gabrels is best known for the distinctive phrasing and squeaky leads from his work with Davie Bowie and Tin Machine, and his sound was very recognizable when he first featured on a Cure track, 1997’s ‘Wrong Number’. Gabrels is considerably more reserved on most points Songs of a lost worldthe first album since he became a full member of The Cure in 2012. The most notable exception is his wild, dissonant lead guitar on ‘Drone:Nodrone’. It’s an outlier Songs from a lost world: The most uptempo song, as well as the only lyrics that exist entirely in the modern world, in which Smith rails against surveillance technology after seeing a drone fly over his house.

Smith says he wrote “Warsong” about “someone I’ve had a fight with, made up with, had a fight with” and the conflict inherent in human relationships. Considering that more than a dozen musicians have played in the Cure over the decades, many of whom have left and returned, it’s impossible to say exactly who the song is about. At 4 minutes and 17 seconds, ‘Warsong’ would have been the longest song on The Cure’s 1979 debut Three imaginary boysbut here it is the shortest song. “I want your death, you want my life” is perhaps the album’s best example of the kind of devastatingly pithy and dramatic lyrics that Smith is known for and loves.

Both of Robert Smith’s parents and his brother Richard died in the 2010s. And the sense of sadness and loss that hangs ominously over you Songs of a lost world This is especially deeply felt in ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’, which was written about Richard’s unexpected death. At one point, Smith sings “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” a phrase coined by Shakespeare The tragedy of Macbeth. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” opens with rain sound effects, perhaps reminiscent of that Disintegration fans of “The Same Deep Water as You.”

Songs of a lost worldSmith’s second single is the only time on the album that Smith sings in the first minute of the song – barely, past the 50-second mark. It’s also his strongest vocal performance on the album, with multi-track harmonies in the chorus. When an aging artist releases a new album, the first thing you notice is often how time has changed their voice. However, Smith at 65 sounds remarkably identical to Smith at 25, especially when his voice expressively cracks on the word “regret.”