“It’s really hard to keep hold of your younger self. When you’ve been writing about it, it’s like a diary when you’re writing songs, and you’re kind of thinking, ‘F*** me, was i This sad when I was so young? I had no idea.”
So spoke the Robert Smith on the first night of The Cure’s sold-out three-show tour of Los Angeles’ 17,500-capacity Hollywood Bowl, addressing an adoring generation growing up – and aged – listening to his anguished and anguished confessionals. over the past four decades. During each night’s nearly three-hour set, the darkest selections from the post-punk band inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (especially “A Thousand Hours,” with its opening punch, ” For how long can I howl in this wind? / For how long can I cry like this?”) certainly had a different hit in 2023. But it was all six unreleased songs from the long-delayed 14th studio album and highly anticipated from Cure, Songs from a Lost World (which will be their first LP since 2008 4:13 Dream), which were particularly dark — even by Cure standards — as Smith, now 64, grappled with his mortality in ways he simply couldn’t in his 20s and 30s.
“I experienced more of the dark side of life, for real. Before, I wrote about things that I thought I understood. NOW I know I understand it. The lyrics I wrote for this album, for me personally, are truer,” Smith told the British magazine. NME in 2019, when he first announced plans for the new record. “They are more honest. That’s probably why the album itself is a bit more downbeat. I feel like I want to do something that expresses the darker side of what I’ve been through for the past few years, but in a way that will engage people. That same year, Smith told the Los Angeles Times This Songs from a Lost World would be “very much on the darker side of the spectrum.” I lost my mom, dad, and brother recently, and that obviously had an effect on me. … It is worth waiting for. I think it’s the best thing we’ve done, but I’d say that. A lot of songs are difficult to sing, and that’s why it took me a long time.
Smith, one of rock’s most iconic and instantly identifiable vocals, actually sounded flawless as he dug deep into the Songs from a Lost World material. Launch of a new album track, “Another (Happy) Birthday”, he cried: “And your birthday is the worst day / I sing for a ghost / ‘Happy birthday’…I forget how it goes…” Although the origins of this song may be dated back to 1997, Smith could have sung it for his recently deceased musician parents, or for his late brother, Richard. Richard, who was affectionately known as “The Guru” and was 13 years Robert’s senior, had a huge influence on the formation of The Cure, teaching Robert how to play the basic guitar and introducing Robert to his vast collection of records in the early 70s.
“I Can Never Say Goodbye” was billed each night as being specifically about Richard, and included the heartbreaking chorus: “Something wicked comes this way / From the cruel and treacherous night / Something wicked comes this way way / To steal my brother’s life.” Every Bowl night is the other Songs from a Lost World the singles were “Alone”, “A Fragile Thing”, “And Nothing Is Forever”, and the even closer pre-titled “Endsong”, in which Robert sang: “And I’m outside in the dark/Staring at the blood -red moon/Remembering the hopes and dreams I had/All I had to do/And wondering what happened to that boy/And the world he called his own/ And I’m out in the dark/I wonder how I got so old.”
The Cure’s music is actually ageless, and their Shows of a Lost World tour wasn’t all death and despair. As one of the most changeable bands of all time, their slightly varied late-night setlists deviated from the spartan punk-pop of Three imaginary boysto the effervescent Eurodisco of “Let’s Go to Bed” and “The Walk”, to the bad-acid-trip psychedelia of High“Shake Dog Shake” from “Shake Dog Shake” 120 minutes-classics from the time of head on the door And Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me… then back to the dirges of the two albums that seem to have the most in common with the future Songs from a Lost World1982 Pornography and the years 1989 Disintegration.
Smith cries wolf and says each album will be The Cure’s last since the release of Disintegrationthat many fans (including the South Park kids!) and critics consider the high point of the band’s career. (Ironically, Smith wrote this claustrophobic, depressing record with the intention of making it “commercial suicide,” as he once explained to Yahoo Entertainment, but it ended up being The Cure’s biggest release. It sold 3 million copies and produced a hit single, “Lovesong”, which went to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was later covered by 311, Adele and at least two. american idol competitors.) However, it seems that Songs from a Lost World could really be Smith’s final and defining statement.
In 2020, keyboardist Roger O’Donnell said classic pop that he had advised Smith: “’We have to make another record. It has to be the most intense, saddest, most dramatic and emotional record we’ve ever made, and then we can just walk away from it. He accepted. Listening to the demos, he East This folder. A year later, Smith himself told the UK Sunday time“New [album] is very emotional. It’s 10 years of life distilled into a few hours of intense stuff. I can’t think we’ll ever do anything else. I definitely can’t do it again.
There is still no confirmed release date for Songs from a Lost World, but no matter what the future holds for The Cure, the lyrics to new song “And Nothing Is Forever” resonated deeply this week with the band’s loyal fans in Los Angeles, many of whom had attended all three nights of the Cure’s Hollywood Bowl race. “My world has grown old/But it really don’t matter/If you say we’ll be together,” Smith pleaded. “Promise you’ll be with me at the end…You’ll remember me tonight.”
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