good morning !
The Cure are BACK with a new album: Songs of a Lost World.
This is one I’ve been waiting for (and I’m sure many other Cure fans have been waiting for this too). The album does not dissapoint.
In fact, I’d say it’s perhaps my favourite album released this year. Released 16 years after their previous album, The Cure’s latest returns to the goth-rock that they pioneered decades ago.
Even a look at the album artwork – an off-white asteroid suspended alone against a dark black backdrop – previews some of the core themes from the album. Much of it feels isolated and far away from this earth. You’ll find no ready-made hits for mainstream radio here, so don’t expect anything like a Friday I’m in Love or Lovesong.
The band instead builds out a landscape, one that seems to explore an infinitely expanding space.
One of my favourites from this record is I Can Never Say Goodbye, a song that appears to be Robert Smith’s acceptance of his brother’s death.
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
And so continues this theme of foreboding dread.
Perhaps the closest we get to a true “pop song” (which I use very loosely here) is A Fragile Thing, which recalls some loss of love.
“And there’s nothing you can do to change it back, “ she said
”Nothing you can do but sing, this love is a fragile thing
Nothing you can do now but pretend again”
Concluding the album is a terrific 10-minute song, Endsong. There reportedly was supposed to be another song to close the album, but I feel this is a fitting bookend and one that captures another theme: the emptiness in the vast expanse of space.
All that’s left as the 10-minute song winds down, we’re asked what is left at the end. Smith answers:
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Fitzie’s track of the day: I Can Never Say Goodbye, by The Cure
And now for your links:
Alasdair Gold: Why Daniel Levy ‘shouldn’t want his Tottenham back’
Jay Harris ($): Ange Postecoglou must find solution to Spurs’ inconsistency
Matt Law says Levy ‘does not care about winning’
Dan KP: Postecoglou’s biggest problems at Spurs
The Indepent’s review of Songs of a Lost World: “Gothic, gorgeous proof that no one does misery better”
