New Cure Album: First in 16 Years
By Ivan Reyes
Staff Writer
It has been 16 years since the Cure released 4:13 Dream. For context, the Cure is an English rock band from Crawley, West Sussex. They were an essential element to the alternative music scene in the 80s and they also contributed much to gothic culture, with hits such as “Boys Don’t Cry” “A Forest” and “Just Like Heaven”.
It is seldom that a band make a comeback album (even a song) that is decent. The Beatles, who had released “Now and Then” a year earlier, might have had a good send-off for John Lennon and George Harrison but the song was kind of mediocre at best. This is what’s different about the Cure’s new album, Songs of a Lost World: it is actually decent and holds well to modern standards.
First, let us talk about the album cover. It features a work called Bagatelle by Janez Pirnat, a Slovenian artist. For me, the cover gives me feelings of indifference, perhaps, a bit of dread. The album’s theme is around death and ending and the album cover they chose perfectly plays around those themes.
The album features a ton of distorted guitars and it’s also heavy on the bass. The drum work is excellent too, but the mixing could have been better. I have listened to the album through speakers, earphones and even a headset but it always feels overly compressed and a little lacking on dynamics. Overall, the instrumentalization is good.
It makes up for it through its use of lyrics. Robert Smith has always been a master lyricist, and it is shown here in songs like “And Nothing Is Forever” and “All I Ever Am” where the lyrics impose feelings of finality and conclusion. “A Fragile Thing” talks about the fragility of love but because of the instruments and the tempo, it feels more uplifting and freeing than dreadful.
Is the album good? Yes, but it definitely could have been way better. It features 8 songs that don’t overstay its welcome. It has enough to say about its themes and the feelings it invokes are strong but not as good as their earlier works. If the mixing was improved this album would be one of their best but in my opinion but it’s a 7.5/10 at best. Which is decent for a comeback album!