Songs Of A Lost World

Listen, I was happy for more music from The Cure too, but this is still getting radio play on indie stations. Maybe let the body cool before throwing it on a greatest of all time list? Doubt this one will be remembered a year from now, much less stand among timeless albums from decades ago. Rating is for the silliness of adding this, album is a 3/5.

Wow, three votes so far, at the time of writing. Must have only been suggested a couple of days ago, tops. Anyway. Here's vote four, review three. After the first track I was prepared to go on rant about how The Cure shouldn't be shoegaze. Sure, a load of shoegaze massives would argue that The Cure was one of their primary inspirations, but The Cure are not shoegaze in the same way that The Beatles are not britpop. Blimey though, this is a really shoegazey record. Fortunately, it is also The Cure. The thing about The Cure is that they are excellent. Robert Smith can conjure feelings out the wahooey, and that's exactly what this record does. Conjures feelings. I'm not as old as Smith - he's got over two decades on me - but the feelings this music inspires - ageing, slowing down, loss, reflection, a curious lack of anger, despite protests of injustice and unfairness - are every bit as powerful to middle-aged me as the mournful optimism and hope of Picture of You were to me in my teens and twenties. I mean, even now as a cynical and jaded curmudgeon in his mid forties, Pictures of You can cut through the shield of my bitter and calloused shell. We will have to leave this album to brew for thirty or so years to see if anything from it will hit as hard. On just one listen, I suspect probably not, but it's not really fair to ask anyone - even Robert Smith - to try and equal Robert Smith. It is, to be sure, an absolutely excellent album and I suspect that I'll listen to it a lot...but I agree it is maybe a bit young still to be in the pantheon. Mind you, Kiwanuka is also very young and that definitely needs to be on the list, so I'm willing to allow it. For the moment.

I knew The Cure had a new album, but I never found time to give it a go. It's very dark, as it should be

Holy moly. I got halfway through this, thinking, "this is amazing, how have I never heard any of this before?" I finally looked it up and found that it's pretty much brand new. Amazing. Earlier in this list when I got Pornography and Disintegration I was blown away because I had never delved deeper into their catalog than the hits I had heard on the radio. Now I'm even more impressed. So good. 4 stars.

This was really lovely. Lushly arranged, and Robert Smith is in excellent voice. Honestly we are years off from seeing if this album has any staying power at all, but it sure was nice to see that Cure are still doing quality work. Fave Songs: Alone, A Fragile Thing, All I Ever Am, And Nothing is Forever

Gothic rock, space rock. Ni fu ni fa.

Another incredibly recent album which is always a weird choice for favorite album ever. Anyways The Cure is classic shoegaze but this album isn’t nearly as shoegazey as the older Cure is. Overall it’s a good album sure that really focuses on the difficulties of life and age. It’s not the cures best and it’s really not an amazing album but it’s still good. 6.6/10