The Cure -- Songs Of A Lost World

The Hoffman lot have said Alone's Dynamic Range is a 6, so that could explain the lack of 'widescreen'

it's very compressed and most of the guitar and piano are buried in the mix behind the main synth strings - the opposite of disintegration where everything is crystal clear!

i always thought Disintegration sounded a bit murky/muddy - but in a good way! kind of like you are listening to it thru the sonic equivalent of the gloom and shadows in the cover art.

did most of my listening that LP on a walkman so who knows how that distorted my perceptions. have just ordered the cassette of the new album, maybe it will come alive on cheaply manufactured type 1 magnetic tape!

Don't hate me, but I'm underwhelmed. The lyrics are recycled from everything he's written. The intro is pointlessly long. The music has no structure or melody. And I agree with the drums and guitar being bad.
It's no "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep", "Plainsong", "Sinking", "A Thousand Hours", or "The Last Day Of Summer".
At least Robert sounds better than on the last two records.

Sounds lousy, I agree, and Jason Cooper sounds (a) worse than a drum machine, by some margin, and (b) like he's just barely remembered to hit each and every beat, his timing is just lousy and continuously off in a way that's almost impressive in its bloody-mindedness.
On the plus side Robert's vocal is pretty great and the lyrics are solid in a perpetual-adolescent way, even epic. I'll admit I got chills toward the end.
With a far better mix this might reach the grandeur it aspires to.

This song absolutely kills live

Bass guitar tone is glorious.

Jason Cooper

It's kind of a mystery, because when I (many of us) saw them last year, he sounded pretty good, and I've never liked his playing before. But for all we know this track was recorded 10 years ago.

they started recording in 2019 and finished the album in august

One note a day.

I loved this live. I imagine the mix sounds amazing and expansive when cranked on headphones during a walk through a decaying city.

Sounds lousy, I agree, and Jason Cooper sounds (a) worse than a drum machine, by some margin, and (b) like he's just barely remembered to hit each and every beat, his timing is just lousy and continuously off in a way that's almost impressive in its bloody-mindedness.

the atmos mix is available to stream via amazon already & is apparently nowhere near as brickwalled as the stereo mix so i expect it should be a clear improvement

(b) like he's just barely remembered to hit each and every beat

a good thing imo

i don't love cooper's playing here but i don't hate it, my real issue is the way the drums sound - they're going for big epic 80s drums but they don't actually sound like drums do on 80s records & the sound is rather harsh

Idk closest reference is plainsong and that’s a song that’s 35 years old and it sounds as “widescreen”. Everything sounds very plain. I do like it either way. Robert Smith’s voice is always pleasant.

*And it doesn’t sound as widescreen.

"plainsong" is the opposite, there's plenty of space for everything (though it's much sparser) and it's not compressed to death

compare that to the piano & guitar noodling on "alone" at around 2 minute mark which you can barely hear underneath the synth strings

i like the harshness too, it feels very deliberate. don't really need this to sound like Disintegration.

the atmos mix is available to stream via amazon already & is apparently nowhere near as brickwalled as the stereo mix so i expect it should be a clear improvement

― ufo, Friday, 27 September 2024 02:35 (two hours ago) link

Really? I have Amazon Music right now.

I was also worried as the YouTube rip sounded brickwalled to me, tho I enjoyed it. This HD mix is the way to hear this. Everything is separated out and nothing is buried, you hear the piano and guitar cristal clear and the drums didn't seem to stand out the same way. Simon's Bass really shines through. This is going to be the way to listen to this album!

Does the guitar line remind anyone else of "The Top"?

Actually reminds me, fancifully I admit, of "Why Can't I Touch It" n' all.

Also listened to it through Beats Headphones.

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/66f46970b4ab78deb97e498f/master/w_960,c_limit/The-Cure-Songs-of-a-Lost-World.jpg

ROBERT SMITH CREATED THE SLEEVE CONCEPT, AND ANDY VELLA, A LONG-TIME CURE COLLABORATOR HANDLED THE ALBUM'S ART AND DESIGN. THE COVER ART FEATURES 'BAGATELLE', A 1975 SCULPTURE BY JANEZ PIRNAT.

Hey at least there are no splash cymbals

Is that good? Splash cymbals have been a Cure hallmark since the Lol drum days.

I like that the E in the band name contains a little thumbs up.

Listened to this on proper speakers last night, I like it. A lot better than I was expecting, tbqf.

(also welcome back JiC!)

Yeah on second listen this is sounding better and better. I just wish the guitar was higher and there would be more 6 string bass noodling

Also weird to complain about a long intro, I mean... that's long been a thing with these guys and I think it really helps to set the mood! Absolutely feels like an album opening track - though I haven't seen a tracklist anywhere yet, so I may be proven wrong.

It was the opener for their tour set list so I expect it’s the first track of the album

Also weird to complain about a long intro, I mean... that's long been a thing with these guys and I think it really helps to set the mood!

When I told my wife (lifelong Cure fan, unlike myself) about this part — "It's seven minutes long but there are no vocals until minute four" — she laughed immediately.

The long intro is great. The sound of the song is great. The lyrics on the other hand are so cliched and trite. They sound like a parody or AI comped imitation of an overly depressing Cure song. Feels very intentionally hitting on keywords people may find emotional or sad. The 3cd version with the instrumentals may be necessary for this album if the rest of the lyrics are this laughably dramatic.

We are talking about the Cure here.

There's part of it that feels like: oh, this is what Joy Division might sound like if they'd lasted another 40 years.

Yeah the lyrics have become their weak spot since WMS, ponderously laboured when they used to be impressionistic and whimsical. From what Robert has been saying, his inability to come up with words spontaneously and organically is the main reason their output has dwindled to a halt.

I read an interview with Neil Finn years where he claimed all those hooks and songs and melodies come relatively easy to him, but that the lyrics are the real struggle

Even at Disintegration, Smith had begun struggling — vividly remember a TV interview with him miming Simon posting a sheaf of lyrical ideas under his bedroom door when he was holding up the band for days trying to write

“Cut Here” feels like a real ending point for his facility, and even then the busy melodic filigrees and contrapuntal play in the vocal lines were a throwback.

Famously/infamously/apocryphally, Daniel Lanois locked Peter Gabriel inside a barn and made him finish the lyrics to "So".

maybe Bernard Sumner can come over and help write some lyrics

It shows how little we understand of the functioning of the brain's neurochemistry and SSRIs' effect upon it that a pill that may cause blockages (as it did in my own case) has also been prescribed as a cure for writer's block. In a Late Show documentary aired in 1995, the psychiatrist and author Oliver James gave five artists Prozac to see what effect it would have on their creative output. Two of them – the New Order frontman Bernard Sumner and the poet Alan Jenkins – were blocked when filming began. Sumner, who was working on his Electronic side project with Johnny Marr at the time, was afflicted by a hyper-critical internal voice, and said that the process of writing lyrics was "like breaking a horse". As he wrote, he'd hear repeated in his head: "You can't do this, you can't do this."

I spoke to James about the effect of SSRIs on writer's block. "What the film showed," he told me, "was that once you removed the depression – and Prozac did seem to do that, whether by placebo or not – people could write. When I first met Bernard Sumner he was clearly blocked and by the end of it he'd written some lyrics." There was a hitch, though. "What I couldn't say on the documentary was that he may have done some work, but I'm not sure that it was any good."

"trite" seems a little unfair to me

Absolutely feels like an album opening track - though I haven't seen a tracklist anywhere yet, so I may be proven wrong.

Yeah Apple Music is showing it as the first track of an 8 track album.

Listening to this on Apple lossless now and it does sound quite a bit better

Robert curated a "darker Best Of The Cure" playlist on Spotify. It contains a lot of my favorite songs:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4sqo4XGkDoqPFRQe6bmCXd?si=u73suv6aS5Stl20STpE7Zw

This playlist is GREAT

Spotify, sheesh. I guess Robert's activism stops at Ticketmaster. Hope they clean up on bucket hats, tote bags, embossed journals and mugs

i think we should shame every band on spotify until they stop

just seems inconsistent in this particular case, not to mention counterproductive

I finally have had a chance to sit down and really listen to this a few times. I absolutely loved this in concert but my initial listen through the speaker on my phone felt a little tinny and uninspiring, plus I was rushing out of the door to be a tourist so I didn’t get to Robert’s vocal. Played on decent speakers, the build through the intro felt more organic and was easier to appreciate. It’s a trick they do a lot but they’re very good at it.

I don’t really agree with the criticism of the lyrics. Robert has been writing like this throughout his entire career and I think there’s a good amount of “familiarity breeds contempt” happening for some people, especially when you consider that he’s been writing songs for almost 50 years. I don’t think it’s the best lyric he’s ever written but it’s very, very far from “The doleful cant of a bigot / Blinded by fear and hate”

I cannot wait for this album to be in my hands.