The Brothers Grim

The Cure (finally) release album number 14

What with having to stare down pension plans and reduced bone density, it’d be reasonable to think that the release of a new Cure album might not have flicked across the radar of their original fan base. But anyone who caught one of the sold out gigs on their last live go around knows that’s fairly unlikely. Especially since the band did their part by opening all of those shows with the lead cut from the record everyone knew for some time would be called Songs of a Lost World.

Album number 14 follows 16 years on from 2008’s 4:13 Dream—a record that was criticized in some quarters for not delivering at least one clear classic to add to the pile of dark gems The Cure had stockpiled since their debut 30 years earlier. The new record, which according to singer/guitarist Robert Smith is the first of three final releases, took root just as the world ran headlong into the pandemic. 

“If I have one regret is that I said anything at all about it in 2019.” Smith said recently via their YouTube channel. “Because we’d only just started creating it.”

 But once the black cat was out of the bag, an artificially uncomfortable wait was set in motion. After all, it had already been more than a decade since the last one - a period which saw guitarist Pearl Thompson traipse through the exit (again…) while Roger O’Donnell returned to his post as the band’s principal keyboard player.

The eight tracks that the current version of The Cure settled on for this collection were sourced from a set of demos that Smith wrote entirely by his lonesome. His rationale for purposely side-stepping a more collaborative process was a fear that the final disc might have resulted in something less cohesive. It was most certainly a “vision” thing. But since at least 75% of this material had been thoroughly road-tested before it reached mastering, the band were allowed to go back and add a fair number of instrumental tweaks to what had already been laid to tape.  

What we get then is a what you might expect from an outfit closing in on fifty years of output – a superbly produced suite that underlines the band’s nature as opposed to planting an exclamation point after most of what you might hear. The lyrics may present to the general public as being clinically overcast, but Smith sounds more given to being bewildered here than anything else. How is this so hard to figure out? How are we still angry with another? How did I get so old?

And as often as the text is straightforward, the music is anything but. There are long expositions, unexpected contrivances (…is that a harmonium at the beginning of “Warsong”?), and twisty guitar lines that are baked in heavy swaths of reverb and distortion. From the start “Alone” sets the template of the record, which is less of a containment field for the dour and more of a celebration of the grim majesty that Smith finds himself marinating in. It’s a classic and one of at least three tracks that are sure to be recycled on future “hits” packages - the others being the piano appended “And Nothing Is Forever,” with the other being the mournful “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” which Smith wrote as a paean to his late brother. The buzzy “All I Ever Am” comes close as well, as does ten minutes plus of “Endsong” with its cavernous, tribal drums.

Smith mixed the record at home and claims that the 180gm black vinyl mix we took out for a spin is “slightly different” to the digital and CD versions that are out there as well. The hype sticker on this U.S. copy proclaims that the mastering was undertaken by “Brian Lucey & Bernie Grundman," with the inner sleeve clarifying that the actual cut was done at Bernie Grundman Mastering. The worldwide release however advertises itself to be mastered and cut by Abbey Road’s Miles Showell. Why the two versions is for the moment, unclear. But both editions and the versions pressed in Marble Stone and white color variants are done on bioplastic (which is only two years or so into the toddler phase of its existence).

The disc itself is impeccably quiet, but unfortunately we weren’t able to get our hands on the double LP half speed master copy that (oddly enough…) is being offered at Capitol’s online store for not much more than single album variant. Atmos mixes that Smith supervised himself as well as instrumental only version of the album are on the associated Blu-ray. Amidst all that, what we heard was bass rich and not at all muddled even at the music’s busiest points. The guitars crackle appropriately and the highs that are detailed in the subtle, odd effects on “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” pop far more than they do in the generic streams that are out there.

Given the many options, this review feels like something of a cheat - particularly here and especially with an album so lovingly etched with intention into The Cure’s history. It’s a milestone release by the very nature of where it falls on the band’s timeline, but whether or not it would occupy some fictional spot in a Nick Hornby-like list of “Top 5 Cure albums to fret to” is another thing. What we can say is that it’s probably just what the darker end of Post-Punk should have gloriously blossomed into this many years on.