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.

Beautiful goth rock album by The Cure. This is the first album featuring Reeves Gabriels, the former David Bowie guitarist. It has 8 long and slow tracks sounding similar to the slower tracks on Disintegration.

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.

Up there with anything The Cure have ever recorded. Lovely, atmospheric, excellent. Stunning that a band approaching their sixth decade still have the creative juices to make auch a quality 15th album. Rating: 5/5 Playlist track: Alone Date listened: 24/02/25

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

I'm curious to find out what the Cure sounds like in 2024. I can only assume it's a trainwreck, but I'd like to be proven wrong. Ok, it's... pretty fucking good. It's still basically the Cure, but now it's kinda old and fat. Which isn't really fair, because I already knew what Robert Smith looks like these days and it's an easy mark. I also never noticed this before, but Justin Hawkins clearly owes Smith a few tips of the hat. None of the high notes of course, but just solid mid range. His voice warbles, never fucks around, just does exactly what it can. Musically it's very dirge-y. I dunno if you'd call this shoegaze; it sounds more like post rock to me. But whatever it is, it's almost hypnotic. This will make great study/work background music. End update: I liked this way more than expected. I dunno what this band has done since the 80s but they're onto something good here, at the (presumed) end of their career. And the memes about how fat and haggard Smith is aren't reflective of his artistic output, so that's nice. 5/5. This was a 4 until the last minute, but I just had to bump it up for being so unexpectedly good.

As good as anything they've put out. Normally I'd be hesitant to give something this recent five stars but this is an instant classic.

Hard to put such a fresh album in context, but it is something of a miracle that Robert Smith pulled this off so well. It is exactly in the Disintegration/Pornography vibe, dark and brooding. A Fragile Thing and I Can Never Say Goodbye are just outstanding, and the rest of the album is both interesting and is a welcome return to this sound. Loved it.

Sometimes it is possible to go back - if only for a little while.

Really like this. Not a huge The Cure fan, but this was a good listen. One of the better recent albums from a "legacy" band in a long while.

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.

Every band has its peak and the latter day product rarely (if ever?) meets it. As a person who never remotely had "it" in the first place and still engages in creative pursuits for, you know, art's sake, I certainly can't begrudge the impulse to persist. And honestly this is pretty good - about as good as the 30 years later thing ever gets. I can vibe with the darker tone and the lament of the aging not-so-gracefully. But it gets a little gloomy at length: I miss that reeling, madcap abandon that would flash through in songs like Just Like Heaven. Extra nostalgia point for 90s college radio days memories.

I really like this album, but it seems like a little soon to be adding this (and Brat).

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: A fragile thing, I can never say goodbye, Endsong

This felt like classic cure but for some reason it hit on a completely different level for me than classic cure does. Not sure what it is but I really enjoyed this one.

First time listening to the entire album. This is exactly what you'd expect from Robert Smith, and yet have it be new and fresh. Good find.

One of the best albums last year

Kind of an amazing revisit to someone I haven't heard from in 35 years. It was very nice, feeling very much like The Cure for those of us who are over 50.

It's definitely at the bleak and cold end of the Cure spectrum, whereas I am more of a pop Cure person... But no band has any right to be this good at it this far into its career. They're at the pipe and slippers end of their career and still turning this out? Fair play.

A 2024 album, daring! Not a total shock though, considering it’s the first album in 16 years from such an iconic band, and considering it’s a return to form! A nice chance to give it another listen through

Pleasantly surprised by this one! Very cool

What’s not to like a good Cure album.

Did we need a 4th album from The Cure? No we do not. I'm a little surprised that someone would pick an album that was so new. My own pick was just over a year old and because it had really permeated popular culture I felt like it had enough clout to be on the list. This album? I mean I guess The Cure are known but I don't hear people clamouring to play this. It got a lot of play at the end of 2024 and made some best of lists, but that's 3 months ago as of this writing and this album is just 5 months old. It needs more time to cook. It's a fine album but still too damn early. My personal rating: 4/5 My rating relative to the list: 4/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Probably the newest album on the (extended) list, and certainly more recent than the previous edition of the book. A worthy prog-goth effort, sounding enough like their classic work to appeal. Would probably benefit from a few days to properly immerse myself in it, but there's another album waiting for today.

There's like a 98% chance this will be in the new edition of the book if they're still making them, so greetings from the User Albums list to all the people listening to this over on the original list in 2028. This is probably their best album since Disintegration. Not like that's a particularly big hurdle to overcome, but it's always awesome to see an artist pull off something that can stand alongside their classics 40 years after their prime.

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.

The Cure have had a ton of albums of great tunes since 1979, I’m not sure if the one they dropped in 2024 needs to be the one I hear before I die. Maybe 1001 to hear from 2024. No complaints. It’s still the Cure.

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

This was interesting and not unenjoyable. As someone not really into the other the Cure albums, this was likely not going to be a complete hit with me. Fortunately it’s not a complete miss either.

Pretty good

Yeah their best for a while

I do get the hype around this latest The Cure album - it’s the first release in nearly 20 years by a truly legendary band, now the elder statesmen of goth rock, and it’s their strongest release in over 30. It just really doesn’t stand up to their best work in my opinion A lot of the positive reviews commend how much it sounds like their darker and more meditative records like Disintegration and Pornography, and it does sound a lot like those two - just a less interesting version of them. There are some good songs on here for sure, and Robert Smith’s voice sounds exceptional for a guy in his 60s. The slow and foreboding opener Alone, which I wasn’t a big fan of when it was released as a single, actually does a really good job of setting the tone - similarly Endsong does a great job at closing things out. A Fragile Thing is very catchy and the highlight of the album for me, and one of the only tracks on here that does stand up with those earlier records. Everything else just sounds like subpar The Cure, and unfortunately (at risk of sounding like I’m contradicting myself) the one song where they really sound like they’re trying something different is Drone:Nodrone which sounds incredibly dated and just weirdly clunky. I don’t think it’s a terrible album at all, but it’s maybe The Cure’s 7th or 8th best record. Maybe it is a return to form but to me it sounds like a band with nothing new to say since the 80s

Not a huge fan of the Cure and this hasn’t done much to change that.

I enjoy The Cure. This album is pretty good. But it's wild for someone to have put a 2024 Cure album on here. Surely it's no where near as good as their classic stuff. Also, there are already 3 Cure albums on this list! What are we doing, friends? More of a 2.5 for me but I'm full of piss n vin today and I'm rounding DOWN

I don't know the album, but at first glance it seemed like something experimental for The Cure. Frankly, it seemed like a very weak proposal, too relaxed that never really explodes even with its best songs. It seemed like an introspective work to me and therefore not at all compelling.

Boring

Always enjoyed the cure and I think we got an album or two from them on the regular list. Someone must really like them to add their newest album.