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Songs of a Lost World, the 14th studio album from The Cure, might just be unprecedented. The statistical circumstances surrounding the album are unique: this is the first completely new material from an indescribably influential band in 16 years, arriving about five years after it was initially scheduled, and after the group had been regularly playing some of the songs at their consistently popular concerts for years. It's not the typical release schedule, even for a legacy act, but somewhere in the history of rock music there might be an exact analog. What really make Songs of a Lost World atypical is how great it is. The eight songs that make up the album aspire to and often reach the same slow-moving grandeur of the Cure's high-water mark album, 1989's Disintegration, only without any of the playful pop that snuck into that record and propelled the band's biggest singles.

Themes of loss, isolation, impermanence, and mortality are all translated into Robert Smith's signature melodic melancholia, all of it delivered in deep, drawn-out, sweeping movements. The nearly seven-minute opener "Alone" sets the pace, with dense swirls of synths, simple, pounding drums, and the kind of lengthy building intro that the band perfected on some of their best songs. It's a solid three minutes before Smith starts singing, but the arrangement has forgotten about time by that point, creating an atmosphere that's hard not to get lost in. This atmosphere sustains for the album's duration. There are some spikes in energy like the tormented grooving of "Drone Nodrone" or the cinematic drive of "All I Ever Am," but even these outbursts don't stray too far from the concentrated whole that the album presents.

The general path this album takes is consistent throughout, whether manifesting as the creaky pump organ chords that begin the aching "Warsong" or the bittersweet collision of auburn-hued string arrangements and crunchy alt-rock guitars on "And Nothing Is Forever." Closer "Endsong" takes its time hammering the album's overarching feeling home with a ten-minute runtime that echoes peak moments of slow, sad beauty from the group's decorated past. This is the first Cure album written and arranged solely by Smith since 1985's The Head on the Door, and there's a similar color to the solitude he explores here. It's a win against slim odds that the band would make a solid, listenable album almost 50 years in, and with almost 20 of those passing since their last new set of songs. Songs of a Lost World isn't just an album of unlikely listenability, though. It's a new chapter late in the game so unexpectedly powerful that it's nothing short of stunning, and just as unexpectedly, it ranks among the band's best work. — (via AllMusic)

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Label: Polydor, Fiction Records
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Bioplastic, 180g
Released: 2024
Genre: Rock
Style: Alternative Rock, Goth Rock

File under: Alternative / Indie / Pop
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