Songs from The Cure: Lost World Review: dark, personal and the best since Decay | treatment

dHis post-treatment history is strange. They ended the '90s in apparent disarray (disappointingly wild mood swings ended their commercial heyday and festival shows degenerated into drunken farces), but in the 21st century they are more revered than ever. The younger artists paying tribute can't be moved: Everyone from heavy metal bands to dance producers seemed to want to collaborate with frontman Robert Smith.

It was a kind of rebirth and proof of the great influence they had, but could not fully exploit due to healing. They could always draw big crowds, but a new album that lived up to the high points of their back catalog proved disappointingly elusive, and one wondered how many people were at their shows to hear their 2004 self-titled album or 4:13 Dream from 2008, both expanding. . and random. After that, their performances came with new songs, but the release schedule became quiet. Last year, Curepedia's Simon Price's definitive book, “Will It Ever Happen?” opened his entry about the upcoming new album with the absurd question.

In the video accompanying Songs of a Lost World, Robert Smith's description of what has happened in the 16 years since his last album includes ominous promises of abandoned recording sessions, release dates and personal upheavals: his brother , his sister and “the rest of my aunts.” and uncles” have died. In some ways, these losses seem to have finally inspired the creation of a lost world of songs.

They certainly fuel it, anchoring and amplifying the existential angst that has haunted the Cure movement since its inception. A writer capable of transforming his fear of turning 30 into the hollow desperation of 1989 decadence now has something more emotionally powerful than his twenties. His songs find Smith grieving, contemplating his own mortality – “My weary dance of age and resignation moves me slowly towards a dark and empty stage” – and lost in reflection on a past that feels more inviting than grim and divisive. . Today is the day. Therapy has rarely become social commentary, which makes Warsang even more curious: “We lie to each other to hide the truth… All we do is shame, wounded pride, vengeful anger.”

They often seem like the most directly personal songs Smith has ever written. “Something evil is coming here to steal my brother's life,” he sings on I Can Never Say Goodbye. One of Ntsang's first live performances found Smith crying as she sang: “I'm out there in the dark, how I'm so old / Everything's gone, there's nothing left of what I loved.”

The sound of the album matches the emotional impact of the lyrics. The pacing is generally glacial, which seems strange to say for an album where most songs are over five minutes long and take longer to get to the first line of music, but the songs on Music Lost World feel more direct. and determined. than his immediate predecessors. Even the slower tracks pack a punchy punch, courtesy of the rhythm section. Simon Gallup's bass provides a visceral growl and the drums cut through the layered sound reminiscent of the punishing rhythms of 1982's Porn. Split across eight tracks, it lacked the filler that seeped into later Cure albums, where quantity and quality were confused. . And it has moments of amazement: a beautiful piano layer runs and nothing lasts forever; Drone: Nodrone's mixed, feedback-laden guitar; A warm blanket of synth covers Smith's vocals on I Can Never Say Goodbye.

It's powerful, darkly beautiful, and often moves in a way that feels different than anything they've released before. Their detractors have sometimes portrayed Gyre as a band trapped in a kind of teenage worldview: “the emotional drama of teenage depression… the voice of nervous boredom in a small-town bedroom, frenetic and brutal,” once the cult critic Michael Bracewell. He wrote in a withering analysis. That's not an entirely valid review here. Smith is justifiably proud of his band's cross-generational appeal (their legendary lineup with Ticketmaster was driven by a desire to ensure the band's youngest fans could see them live), but Songs of a Lost World feels like it has reached the majority. old to heal with the audience segment that discovered them in the late 70s or early 80s. Introspection usually begins to affect you in middle age: the loss of companions and the announcements of your own death; Realizing that a part of your life that seems most vivid is actually in an increasingly distant and strange past.

Smith also hinted that another Cure album is on the way. We will see. It's tempting to say that it's okay if it's the beginning of an artistic Indian summer, but it won't be a problem if it ends up including the finality of the lines “the end of every song we sing.” As he says alone. Songs of a Lost World is possibly the best album since The Cure in Distraction, and it will be a great release.