The Cure -- Songs Of A Lost World

aka the new album that's been in the works forever. A two track vinyl live release of two songs from it or at least the sessions is due for RSD this year but more importantly, the band's social media just started updating to this:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kqdyhnklmmv34nmml6btyqv6/bafkreifbbsc3hwgk7xgverfik65bt57fol3akselqd3co4w2yzwq6qndwy@jpeg

So...something's up.

new album! at some point in the next 3-5 years!

Apparently the source code contains "The Cure- Blackout"

Lead single maybe?

I just got this framed

https://static.musictoday.com/store/bands/5341/product_600/2ndaustin514819.jpg

Last time the Cure released an album it came a month after a lengthy period of growing Cure hyperfixation came unstuck when receiving Three Imaginary Boys for my 11th birthday and happening to have my head fairly close to the speaker at 1:46 into Subway Song. My then-easily shook self didn't feel like listening to them again until shortly after 4:13 Dream had passed ahem.

I knew a guy who used to carry around a briefcase full of Cure cassette tapes, official and bootlegs, wherever he went.

can't wait!

man i wanted this for so long. i've become so depressed and disillusioned with everything that i just assumed it would never happen. and i want it to be like 'the cure family' ― every still living past member needs to contribute. especially pearl. and lol. and boris. i want jeanette fucking landry on handclaps goddammit. omg, this fucking band.

Yes I popped that image into an editor, cranked up the contrast and revealed a lovely blurry crunchy textured photo of something. Ancient lace maybe?

curefans.com has a contest, you can win a vinyl copy of the album if you guess the correct release date

http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9835.0

my guess: 2037-02-29

Tomorrow. It's tomorrow. I already have a copy. You wish you were me. (I'll repeat this every day and one day I will be right.)

So excited

god imagine if there was a new Cure album that didn't have totally risible artwork

(also I really like the songs played live I've heard so far)

Signed up for the mailing list.

I half expected a "we're excited to announce our new logo" mail.

Robert took heightened control over artwork in '97 and it's almost exclusively sucked ever since.

Design agencies named after CBBC arts and crafts shows were not the way to go.

You mean it hasn't been Andy Vella this whole time? I thought that was the whole idea!

I weep for the days of Parched Art, Cure used to have consistently awesome cover art!

Vella came back for 4:13 Dream. That and Greatest Hits are the post-Galore artworks I like best. For a while the Cure used smART, which afaik is Robert himself directing Stylorouge - Five Swings Live, Bloodflowers, Trilogy, the self-titled album. All hideous and/or shockingly shoddy for a major label band.

I like the s/t art tbh, I think it’s very sweet

I enjoy the album title being listed separately, a la Portishead.

the new songs were honestly my favorite part of the show I saw last year

Currently a slew of rumors flying all day that a supposed release date and physical art for the album is floating around. We'll see.

Looks like November 1 date

hopefully that's the album and not just a single drop

finally!!!!

did it say what year?

god imagine if there was a new Cure album that didn't have totally risible artwork

(also I really like the songs played live I've heard so far)

― Cognosc in Tyrol (emsworth)

Let’s be honest not even classic The Cure had good artwork. Most of it is looks lazy or is not very aesthetically pleasing… imho their best artwork is usually for compilations and I’ll assume the band were not too involved in the art direction of those. Their best album covers imho are:

- Join the Dots
- Mixed Up / Torn Down
- Japanese Whispers
- Standing on a beach / staring at the sea

Wellllll I would go into bat for 17S, Faith, The Top, HotD, KM3 and Disintegration as all being visually distinctive and aesthetically pleasing! As well as vibing with the contents..

Plus a lot of the single sleeves are cool too

They certainly are miles above eg Bloodflowers / The Cure . 4:13

I remember seeing Bloodflowers in a shop and being absolutely shocked, thinking it must have been some kind of mistake or a mocked-up promo sleeve made by the work experience kid at the HMV store

three imaginary boys has a great cover. fridge

Moka you're insane, the Cure have some of the best singles cover art of any band, ever

given the timeframes they've been working with i assume 1 november is when they'll announce the album properly, not the release date

Wellllll I would go into bat for 17S, Faith, The Top, HotD, KM3 and Disintegration as all being visually distinctive and aesthetically pleasing! As well as vibing with the contents..

absolutely, these are great album covers. Disintegration is particularly amazing. The difference between it and alleged-sequel-album Bloodflowers is astounding.

Moka coming with serious challops. I still have my longbox, lol, faith cover mounted to a piece of black paper somewhere, total classic cover

three imaginary boys has a great cover. fridge

Undy’s artwork for the WMS LP / singles / adverts feels like a reclamation of the hated-by-RS Imaginary sleeve. Household objects and heightened, unheimlich lighting.

Chill chill lol I don’t think it’s bad by any means, some of it I do think is decent (Faith and Seventeen Seconds in particular are cool) and very tied to the music within… also yeah I wasn’t considering singles artwork, there’s some brilliant stuff in there I agree.

I don’t think their artwork is anywhere as iconic as their music though

*ducks*

Seventeen Seconds used to be my favourite album cover ever. I ripped it off twice for my first "band" at school.

I can't and won't fault their 79-96 artwork at all. Apart from Concert (which I guess goes for the bootleg look but that's not a good look). Even the lurid toytown of the WMS era I enjoy a lot.

https://i.discogs.com/uVdoAfCAxpxxeNnvoRXBixGCUWG5TUFF00mbVrSO8TI/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:599/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQyNDkz/NS0xNDc3NzA2MDYy/LTk1MTEuanBlZw.jpeg

i hate to be the heavy winded puffed up overbearing guy once again, but that's some fairly iconic artwork you got there, friends.

Hope that's not a joke. That's such a nice piece of cod-Garrett design.

You know what is terrible? This art for the Australian 7" of A Forest. But if you own a copy (I have a moderately beat up one) the aesthetic distress is neatly offset by the Discogs median price.

https://postimg.cc/4H3pLRt7

Ah dammit. Anyway.

Even the angle of the song name adds to the overall air of car air freshener.

Cure album covers poll?

xp lol yes and then the bold design choice to use yet another random and inappropriate font for Another Journey By Train

I do love these early Cure artefacts though - esp the Australian ones, they did some pretty brutal small venue touring here in the early days - and these slightly off-brand releases kind of speak to a time before they became a properly global concern

another favourite!

Happily Ever After with the flag wavers is another bizarre favourite - which I first saw in Michael Ochs' 1000 Record Covers book years before I knew what it was, wondering why it wasn't part of the sleeve collages in the Wish and Greatest Hits booklets.

Kinda looks haflway between SMart the TV show for real, and Hipgnosis (the latter fitting as the comp is the Cure's own A Nice Pair with its similar unrelated imagery).

Btw the Bloodflowers sleeve is a Picasso compared to the booklet, which seems to have been designed on Microsoft Word with Times New Roman like Robert lost a bet, or like someone having made a CD-R of an internet-only release and wanting to make it seem more legit. Actually it's almost a (less interesting) dead ringer for that anti-design style that followed/still follows in the wake of The Life of Pablo.

Poll idea sounds fun

absolutely not joking re: jset cover art. to me, it belongs in the record cover hof, alongside other striking surreal imagery like pink moon, roger dean stuff, bitches brew, funcrusher plus, etc. hyper realistic infinite cartoony scenes instantly burned into my memory. trippy, but functional. very classic.

84-86 singles are probably what I’d consider the apex of their visual identity

That 'Jumping Someone Else's Train' cover I would say is more of a Linder Sterling style lift

Shit, I just listened to that and plain enjoyed it. Didn't need to hold it up to the canon or ask what should have been done better, just a good Cure song like I haven't heard in decades. EXCITED.

weirdly no "another happy birthday" on the album but that was the weakest of the songs they were playing live so i don't mind

i still don't love the production on "a fragile thing" but it doesn't do anywhere near as much damage as it did on "alone"

oh I hadn’t clocked that Another Happy Birthday was missing, interesting

I listened to the live recording only once, because I wanted to have an almost virgin experience right now. Hearing this in HD sound is an engulfing experience. Can't wait for this album.

The Cure are on the front cover of Uncut Magazine on Sale Friday in the UK, with an exclusive Robert Smith interview.

1/6 Whatever’s ailing you, we’ve got @thecure! Robert Smith opens up about Songs Of A Lost World and much more in the new issue of Uncut, in shops on Friday or available for pre-order now: https://t.co/19BMG2NqoB
Includes a FREE 14-track CD curated by Kim Deal! >>> pic.twitter.com/3Xe3FEVUZE

— Uncut Magazine (@uncutmagazine) October 8, 2024

First printed review of the new Cure album, in Classic Pop magazine (issue on sale with Human League on the front cover)

5 stars, calling it a masterpiece

They gave 5 Stars pic.twitter.com/YyEBif7j1X

— WitchHouse raver (@kampfbeagle) October 10, 2024

I wonder if anyone here is on an embargo :-)

*crickets*

The part about Robert getting better at playing piano though. I'm sure he plays some keys, but most of them must be Roger's.

dunno - this feels like a mostly solo album. I heard somewhere that all the songs were credited to Smith only (first time since HOTD).

the main difference in terms of actual songwriting contributions are that no one else's demos made the tracks he was considering for the album - since kmkmkm usually at least a few of simon's tracks would make each album but he didn't use any of them this time.

Roger tended to get a few b-sides up each album, right?

i know roger wrote the music to "fear of ghosts" and "out of mind", and "homesick" came from him & simon jamming to some chords written by lol, he's probably written others over the years but idk which off the top of my head

i think most of them have contributed songs over the years but simon's the most significant in terms of writing after robert

Weren't "Kiss Me" and "Disintegration" (and "Wish"?) built out of collaborative demos, with everyone contributing ideas?

from kmkmkm through to 4:13 dream the general creative process was that everyone submitted demos, they'd all discuss which ones they liked the most, and then robert would try come up with vocal parts for whichever ones he felt like, taking into account the band's feedback to some degree

from what he said in an interview a while ago they still did that process with everyone submitting demos for this album, but he just didn't end up using anyone else's ideas this time

if you listen to simon & robert's demos they're usually pretty fully-formed in terms of arrangement. i think it's been said that some of the others (perry iirc) tended towards less fleshed out ideas that required more input from the rest of the band though

i've seen people say "another happy birthday" was based on a bloodflowers-era demo from perry so maybe it was never considered for this album & instead is planned for that second half-finished album?

The London Troxy promo show will be streamed live on The Cure's youtube channel

(for free, the promo mail also said)

Reviewed at NME with 5 stars

looks like the embargo is smashed, but those subversives at the NME

The Cure – ‘Songs Of A Lost World’: a masterful reflection on loss
https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/the-cure-songs-of-a-lost-world-review-lyrics-3801637

Robert Smith and co’s first full album in 16 years deals in darkness and death, but with flowers on the grave

By
Andrew Trendell

Andrew Trendell
https://x.com/AndrewTrendell
@NME
News Editor | Journalist (NCE/NQJ) | Ex-consultant + producer for
@SomethinElse
+
@BBC6Music
| Ex-
@Gigwise
Editor.

New Album also reviewed in the new issue of Mojo:

The new MOJO, starring @DavidBowieReal and a CD of premium sci-fi rock. Plus @thecure, @officialcult, Supertramp, The Saints, @EzraCollective, @idlesband, @Manics, King Crimson, Tina Turner, @tompetty, Kim Deal, Faces and more. Info: https://t.co/p0Z56MrfZK pic.twitter.com/2aIgwHlrbk

— MOJO Magazine (@MOJOmagazine) October 10, 2024

Mojo: Issue Details 373 December 2024
https://www.mojo4music.com/magazine/latest-issues/mojo-373-december-2024-david-bowie/

I really wonder what was behind Perry's reappearance on the last tour. It doesn't sound like he's played on the album and it's not like they needed a 6th musician on stage. Can't help but feel like this was a favor to him (maybe to get him some needed extra cash)

The cash could be a factor but IIRC he at least makes some "Friday I'm In Love" royalty coin, such as that may be these days.

the Mojo review is by Victoria Segal as mentioned by John Mulvey on Twitter/X

xp yeah that might provide a steady income but his whole demeanor on that tour (from what i could see on photos) looked like someone who didnt really want to be there

maybe he lost a bet with Morrissey

I’d argue the the sixth person onstage let them do arrangements that were a lot closer to the studio overdubs

i assume it's so they can more accurately replicate the handful of songs from wish that have a three-guitar lineup as well as songs that have too many keyboard parts for one person - they've played "six different ways" and "a thousand hours" for the first time in decades

maybe he's someone's only friend in the band

Xp possibly, although I don’t think Perry played any guitar this time around

he played a bunch of guitar & six-string bass on the recent tour

Ah my bad

I'm really starting to believe that this album is going to be a masterpiece.

https://www.stereogum.com/2283833/the-cures-robert-smith-explains-why-ticketmasters-dynamic-pricing-is-a-scam/news/

As the singer for the Cure, Robert Smith could reap some great financial benefits from Ticketmaster’s insane price gouging. But for the past couple of years now, he’s been parroting all of our complaints about the company, even getting them to issue partial refunds to fans due to egregious fees. And he’s not done calling them out yet! In a new, rare interview with the Sunday Times, Smith spoke again about the “scam” of modern ticketing.

I was shocked by how much profit is made [by ticketing]. I thought, “We don’t need to make all this money.” My fights with the label have all been about how we can price things lower. The only reason you’d charge more for a gig is if you were worried that it was the last time you would be able to sell a T-shirt.

But if you had the self-belief that you’re still going to be here in a year’s time, you’d want the show to be great so people come back. You don’t want to charge as much as the market will let you. If people save on the tickets, they buy beer or merch. There is goodwill, they will come back next time. It is a self-fulfilling good vibe and I don’t understand why more people don’t do it.

It was easy to set ticket prices, but you need to be pig-headed. We didn’t allow dynamic pricing because it’s a scam that would disappear if every artist said, ‘I don’t want that!’ But most artists hide behind management. “Oh, we didn’t know,” they say. They all know. If they say they do not, they’re either fucking stupid or lying. It’s just driven by greed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmX1dWsEuJg 100 minute interview here, from the album's website

some of the details are here: https://www.nme.com/news/music/the-cure-have-another-new-album-thats-virtually-finished-and-another-to-come-3802243

he says the second album is "virtually finished" and there's a third album in the works too but he doesn't say much about it other than acknowledging that he 'can't help himself' saying things like that. "another happy birthday" and "it can never be the same" (which was originally intended for 4:14 scream iirc) are planned to be on the second album. he also plans to re-record a song called "boding of sky" (i think?) for the next album after cutting it from this album at the last minute. it was originally the closer (he said it's an acoustic song and compares it to "untitled") but was cut after he changed up the track list to add "drone:no drone" and "all i ever am" which apparently made the album a bit less bleak so it didn't need a lighter closer.

he says he started talking about the album in 2019 even though it wasn't anywhere near done to try to motivate himself to finish it quickly & because he was really excited about the two songs they had finished - "alone" and "endsong". covid then meant that he didn't really work on the album for two years, but he says he realises in hindsight he could have finished during lockdown with the time available.

he mentions he brought perry back into the band because he wanted to do justice to the new songs live.

There ya go. (Heard from someone who'd know that this'll be his only in-depth interview for this album so it's key watching.)

I love how everything turns into a long rambling story <3

Loving this interview

What an outstanding interview. I just sat and watched the whole thing in one sitting like I was a teenager again.

Yep! Hanging on every word because at the endnof the day RS is still a musical hero for me.

Oh noooooooo it’s gone

Uggghhhh, hope it comes back up! Was looking forward to watching that tonight.

still works here? regional Vimeo maintenance maybe?

For me it says, "This video has been removed by the uploader".

Posted to youtube here.

I get “this video has been removed by the uploader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7hxkerU7EE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7hxkerU7EE

this is so good

Very.