Celebrating Robert Smith in advance of his 67th birthday tomorrow. —Ed.
Forty-six or so years after releasing their 1979 debut Three Imaginary Boys, and sixteen years after releasing their last album, 2008’s 4:13 Dream, The Cure did something my Robert Smith-phobic friends dreaded they’d do–came back. Those sixteen years had led many to hope Smith’s Reign of Mope was over. They were wrong and I’m glad, because 2024’s Songs of a Lost World isn’t just a great comeback album–it’s a great album period.
A masterpiece even. And who releases a masterpiece almost half a century into their career? It’s a miracle, really.
Songs of a Lost World is powered by big, ambitious, and somber yet soaring songs, and it’s tremendous despite the fact that there isn’t a single giddy-making pop confection like “Just Like Heaven” or “Friday I’m in Love” or “In Between Days” on it. Instead, Songs of a Lost World is a somber, emotionally and musically powerful meditation on growing old—that lost world in the title is the one we’re living in and losing, day by passing day, as we close in on death.
Songs of a Lost World is near perfect—symphonic, dramatic (natch), and replete with long and lovely instrumental introductions. But it’s not without its rock pleasures—Reeves Gabrels (of Tin Machine fame) makes sure of that with some astounding guitar work, especially on electric powerhouses “Warsong” and “Drone:Nodrone.” And Jason Cooper’s drumming is John Bonham heavy.
As for Smith, he’s in amazing voice—think about someone like Bob Dylan and then think about how Smith doesn’t sound like he’s aged a year. The man is growing old (66) and has intimations of mortality on his mind, and he’s not just contemplating his own demise—one of the more powerful songs on the LP (“I Can Never Say Goodbye”) is about the death of his brother.
Songs of a Lost World opens with “Alone,” and what an opener it is. The long instrumental opening is synthesizer majestic, with Cooper’s drums providing Phil Collins wallop and Gabrels delivering on some distorted power chords. Smith finally comes in at around the song’s midpoint, singing, “This is the end of every song that we sing,” which he follows with
“And here is to love, to all the love
Falling out of our lives
Hopes and dreams are gone
The end of every song.”
The sorrow is there, and it sounds very real, especially when Smith sings,
“Where did it go?
Where did it go?
Where did it go?
Where did it go?
Broken voiced lament to call us home
This is the end of every song we sing, alone.”
That “Broken voiced lament to call us home” slays me because home is death, and we all face death alone, and I can think of few more powerful songs about loss and the inevitable loneliness of death. This is more than a masterful song—it’s a gift.
Smith returns to the same theme on “And Nothing Is Forever,” which is more prayer than song, and has Smith hoping that, despite what he sang in “Alone,” his death will not be a lonely one. It opens with piano and cymbals then in come the strings, which are lovelier but less powerful than the strings on “Alone,” sweeter somehow, and they’re joined by Gabrels’ fuzzed-out guitar and then by Cooper’s drums, and it goes on and on, washing over you like the beauty of a life that you know isn’t forever, until Smith comes in singing, “Promise you’ll be with me at the end.” And I know of few more moving moments than when Smith repeats the lines,
“I know, I know
That my world has grown old
And nothing is forever
I know, I know
That my world has grown old
But it really doesn’t matter
If you say we’ll be together
If you promise you’ll be with me in the end.”
Maybe you have to be in the late autumn of your life (I’m 66 too) to appreciate those lines, all of the lines in these songs, I don’t know. Maybe a teen or someone in their forties or even fifties won’t be able to relate, maybe this is an album for people like me, but I hope not—I know plenty of people who can relate to Bob Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet,” and they’re not all long in the tooth.
“A Fragile Thing” opens with a pretty piano figure and some nice Gabrels guitar and an intricate drum figure, all backed by a big bass line by Simon Gallup, and Smith comes in fast by comparison to most of the other songs on the album. This one is as close as the album comes to a good old-fashioned Cure pop song, and is a kind of goodbye from a former lover, complete with quotation marks, and the gist of it is contained in the heartbreaking lines,
“Nothing you can do but sing, this love is a fragile thing
This love is my everything, but nothing you can do to change the end.”
The Cure then proceeds to liven things up with a pair of twisted rockers, proving that it’s possible to mope aggressively. Scientists have always said aggressive moping is impossible, but “Warsong” is proof positive they’re wrong. It opens with what sounds like a harmonium and some shaky percussion, followed by a very intriguing drum pattern. But what “Warsong” really is is a guitar showcase by Gabrels, who proceeds to produce a linear squall of guitar noise that goes on until Smith comes in, a man singing in a storm, to let us know that the war is a personal and romantic one:
“Ah, it’s misery the way we fight
For bitter ends, we tear the night in two
I want your death, you want my life.”
Glad I’m not there, hope there’s no cutlery at hand. And he goes on in that vein until he ends the song with the repeated lines,
“However we regret
All we will ever know is bitter ends
For we were born to war.”
I’ve never found romance to be that sanguine, but then again, I’ve been divorced twice, so obviously romance is as much War as Peace. I’ve just been pretty good at deserting before any real blood was shed.
“Drone:No Drone” opens with some spacy white noise, after which Simon Gallup comes in with this huge and reverberating bass line that could shake the bobble-head Robert Smith figurine straight off your knick-knack shelf. It’s a doozy. Then the synths and a keyboard come in, followed by some super-fuzz guitar. The melody is sweeping, but this is hard rock, and has Robert Smith sounding fed up:
“Down, down, down, yeah, I’m pretty much done
Staring down the barrel of the same warm gun
Down, down, down
Yeah, I’m pretty much done.”
Don’t know what the song has to do with droning because he’s not droning, and the song isn’t droning; it’s kicking along while Gabrels’ guitar squeals and the rhythm section shoves things forward. Then in comes Gabrels with a guitar solo that is all fuzz, feedback, and dagger thrusts, and on and on it goes until Smith comes back singing,
“So it’s all, “Don’t know, I really don’t”
And all, “Think so, but maybe not”
And all, “Could be a case of me displacing my reality”
And all, “I guess it’s more or less the way that it was meant to be”.”
And the way he stretches out that “reality” while Gabrels guitar squeals is wonderful.
“I Can Never Say Goodbye” is authentically touching, despite the overkill at the beginning (sound of storm, pretty piano, shimmering cymbals, come on) but things cohere when Gallup’s gargantuan bass and Cooper’s very heavy drumbeat join the piano, and they play this lovely intro until Smith comes in and his anguish is real, even if the lyrics are (unlike the other lyrics on the album) overheated gothic melodrama:
“Something wicked this way comes
From out the cruel and treacherous night
Something wicked this way comes
To steal away my brother’s life
Something wicked this way comes
I can never say goodbye.”
That said, Gabrels’ guitar work is marvelous as the song takes the long way out; adding Gabrels to the line-up of The Cure was a stroke of genius on Smith’s part, and the simple piano figure is simply lovely.
“All I Ever Am” is more “pop” than most of the songs on the album, and while I may not care for the melodramatic strings, I like Gallup’s intricate drum pattern and Gabrels’ driving fuzz guitar. Smith once again has growing old on his mind (“my weary dance with age”), and I love the line, “I waste all my world like this” and what follows:
“Intending time and memories
And all for fear of what I’ll find
If I just stop, and empty out my mind
Of all the ghosts, and all the dreams
All I hold to in belief
That all I ever am
Is somehow never quite all I am now
And all for fear of what I’ll find
If I just stop.”
And I love the long instrumental passage with its Gabrels guitar solo and inexorable drive. The song has a bit of that classic Cure pep to it, undercut by Smith’s lyrics, which I guess makes it a prototypical Cure song, albeit not one of their best.
No, they save the best for last with “Endsong,” a ten-minute-plus song that simply crushes you underfoot with its unchanging drum rhythm. It’s a melancholy but driving number, hardly a dirge, especially when things gear up and Gabrels cuts loose on guitar, and the big drums and bass push things forward seemingly forever, massive, instrumental, elegiac. This is the sound of the end, the final moment forever, and it builds and builds as it goes on, titanic, elemental, unstoppable. And it’s almost a shock when Smith finally comes in, well after the six-minute mark, singing, “I’m outside in the dark wondering how I got so old,” which he follows with lines of total desolation while Gabrels wails on guitar and those drums pound away:
“It’s all gone
It’s all gone
Nothing left of all I loved
It all feels wrong
It’s all gone, it’s all gone, it’s all gone
No hopes, no dreams, no world
No, I don’t belong
I don’t belong here anymore.”
Then, in closing,
“Left alone with nothing at the end of every song
Left alone with nothing at the end of every song
Left alone with nothing, nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing.”
This brings us full circle on the extended meditation that is Songs of a Lost World, as those lines dovetail perfectly with the line from opener “Alone,” which goes, “This is the end of every song we sing, alone.”
On Songs of a Lost World, Robert Smith finally grows into his existential angst. He’s no longer the pretentious young man who wrote “Killing an Arab,” he’s in the late autumn of his life, and the closing in of winter has concentrated his mind wonderfully. Confronting the end does that. Smith has earned his despair, and on Songs of a Lost World, he’s pondering the only things worth pondering—what it was all about, was it worth it, what are we left with at the end. As for Smith, he may be left alone with nothing at the end of every song, but he knows he has no choice but to keep on singing.
Robert Smith has at long last come home, but the lights are out, the house is empty, the shadows are long, and he never really lived there in the first place.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
