The Cure -- Songs Of A Lost World

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.

What DJP said, of course. Oddly enough, I haven't listened to it again, not because I didn't like it, anything but, but because I just want to sink into the album in full. (Also, I suddenly realize this is one of the few -- the only? -- Cure single-as-such with neither B-sides nor official remixes, at least not yet. Even "Wrong Number" had some remixes.)

Wrong Number had eight remixes!

Wrong Number had eight remixes!

Wrong Number had eight remixes!

Wrong Number had eight remixes!

Wrong Number had eight remixes!

Wrong Number had eight remixes!

lol what a post to zing-glitch

Do it two more times. You're only up to six.

you can say that again

Sorry sic, wrong number

Hanging Garden only had a couple of live cuts. But anyway I don’t really consider this to be a single - just a song drop.
I miss having bsides to wet the appetite for the album but at 8 song, it sounds like the well of these 6 year sessions was rather dry.

b-but there’s a whole companion album to 4:13 Dream in the can! And a double album! And Robert’s solo albums! That’s what I heard.

But anyway I don’t really consider this to be a single - just a song drop.

So… a single?

wanna SPEAK OUT in defence of the lyrics here
I do of course miss some of the lurid drug mess / kid's book / dodgy sex imagery of prime RSX
but I feel like his life experience has finally caught up to his thematic predilections
and these words are now informed by genuine grief and loss and sorrow instead of just hormones/moping
like, this really is really probably really the final Cure LP and reasonably unadorned meditations on aging and mortality feels like an appropriate way to go out

I listened to all the post-disintegration albums recently and it does feel like his lyric writing really hit a wall around Wish
R.Smith admitted in an interview/s that he was running out of ways to write about the same emotions
all his attempts at cutesy pop giddiness seemed forced and unconvincing (and maybe even age inappropriate somehow)
all his musings on human nature seemed a bit bloodless & not as insightful as all that
but feels like he is invested here
and given that the Cure has been a really monumental part of my music-listening life
& I am reaching an age where I am very conscious of my life as a finite & fleeting proposition
I find this generally pretty moving & good

good post, and I agree

Great post emsworth, nailed it for me.

(Also, I suddenly realize this is one of the few -- the only? -- Cure single-as-such with neither B-sides nor official remixes, at least not yet. Even "Wrong Number" had some remixes.)

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, September 29, 2024 1:38 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this tradition was already on the way out (at least for rock bands) when 4:13 dream came out

Sure but you would think at least a few songs from these alleged projects that have been lurking about for the past 14 years would crop up as b-sides

maybe they really do have another album in the can

Songs For A RAWK World

why would i think that! robert smith talked a lot about things that didn’t materialize and i have no reason to believe any of it exists

they've (including people other than robert) talked about another album (that's supposed to lean into their pop side) that they also started working on in 2019 but there's no reason to believe it's any of it's anywhere near done given how long this one took

& who knows what happened to his plan for 4:14 scream/4:26 dream though they've played two songs from that live

xp: There was a lot more sarcasm in my head than what made it into my post

but I feel like his life experience has finally caught up to his thematic predilections
and these words are now informed by genuine grief and loss and sorrow instead of just hormones/moping
like, this really is really probably really the final Cure LP and reasonably unadorned meditations on aging and mortality feels like an appropriate way to go out

but feels like he is invested here
and given that the Cure has been a really monumental part of my music-listening life
& I am reaching an age where I am very conscious of my life as a finite & fleeting proposition
I find this generally pretty moving & good

This is it exactly. I feel as well that a lot of artists of this sort of age are starting to come out of the woodwork with new stuff driven by the same thoughts. It is moving to see it. And I think, as you say, that listeners, especially those of a similar age, feel it too. I found reading some of the comments on the YouTube upload of this track quite moving as well.

does "I can never say goodbye" sound like "Kayleigh" to anyone but me

I don't know Kayleigh but I just watched a live clip and Reeves Gabriels goes pretty full Tin Machine on this one

(which to me actually sounds kind of cool, lest anyone read that observation as inherently pejorative)