Smeared lipstick, a mop of spikey hair, and a pleading sing-song vocal. If you haven’t guessed those traits embody Robert Smith of The Cure, well, you’re reading the wrong story.
The vocalist and figurehead who’s been christened the Godfather of Goth, Smith and The Cure have released Songs of a Lost World, their first new album in 16 years. Granted, that span feels like forever ago. However, looking at the landscape of similar era groups — Tool, The Chameleons, EMF – that have popped up with new material after a considerable silence, it’s no surprise Smith and Company are back. But The Cure, historically, has sat on a perceptively obtuse fence.
Smith had humble beginnings, like most of his generation, stemming from his middle-class upbringing. Growing up in Crawley, about an hour’s drive south of London, he and his sister Janet took piano lessons. Amusingly, he conceded she was a prodigy, so he switched over to guitar, tutored in the basics by his older brother Richard.
The earliest iteration of the band, known as Easy Cure, didn’t feature Smith as the vocalist. He was playing piano and moved on to being “the drunk rhythm guitarist who wrote all these weird songs,” as he told Musician magazine in 1989. But in 1977 after signing a recording contract, the original singer had dropped away and Smith stepped in for demo sessions that October, none of which made it to release.
By early 1978, the band had been whittled down to a core trio with bassist Michael Dempsey and drummer Lol Tolhurst and Smith as frontperson and vocalist. The Cure’s debut single, 1978’s “Killing An Arab” was a group lyrical effort, encased in staccato instrumentation and a misunderstood narrative. That didn’t prevent controversy and Smith had to reluctantly step forward to explain the song’s title.
“It’s not really racist, if you know what the song is about. It’s not a call to kill Arabs”, he clarified in a New Musical Express interview in 1978. Still and all, the song was not included on their debut album Three Imaginary Boys when it dropped in May 1979. The post-punk movement was underway and the band had embraced that sound to its maximum potential, including a spirited cover version of The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Foxy Lady.”
Winding through their next three albums — Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography — cemented what the public nowadays considers The Cure’s core identity: goth rock. Loosely defined as a depressive outlook lyrically, combined with a somber mood musically, this state of affairs had such a collective psychological effect on their psyche, that the band broke apart at the seams in late 1982.
Smith — who had volunteered to help as guitarist with Siouxsie and The Banshees in 1979 — rejoined them as an official member until 1984, contributing to one of their best-known songs, a 1983 cover of The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence.” But Smith had not officially given up on The Cure, as a standalone single showed a portent of things to come. “Let’s Go to Bed” was released in November 1982, and even as Smith labeled it a “stupid” pop song, it slotted in at a respectable Number 44 on the UK’s Official Charts.
It became clear that with this dynamic shift in song styling it would force Smith to reevaluate The Cure’s future. While continuing to juggle his duties in not only the Banshees, his offshoot The Glove and then witness Siouxsie along with drummer Budgie form their offshoot project The Creatures, this merry-go-round of creativity saw The Cure release two singles, “The Walk” in June 1983 and “The Lovecats,” an October 1983 plinkety-plonk song that was accompanied by an off-the-wall hysterical music video.
Smith made his decision in 1984 to return exclusively to The Cure, a move that Sioux harbors as a grudge as late as 2005, claiming in an Uncut interview he shouldn’t have quit right before a tour. But Smith moved on and the first Cure album in two years, The Top, was released in 1984, to generally poor reviews.
Bassist Simon Gallup, who had left the group after a fisticuff with Smith, rejoined and with the two singles from 1985’s Head on the Door — “In Between Days” and the hand-clap traps of “Close to Me” — signaled The Cure had fully embraced their pop/synth leanings and in no small way, opened the door for wider recognition, especially in the US.
In a strange set of occurrences, the band’s full acceptance into the popular mainstream was a welcome sign. Not only was Smith able to transform his goth persona into a palatable character, the upswing in college radio during the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s was the dominant era for media exposure. Subsequent releases — “Why Can’t I Be You?,” “Fascination Street,” “Friday I’m in Love,” — kept the band in front of their peer community, largely due to Smith’s ability to collaborate and record with others under The Cure moniker, held aloft by the power of what was colloquially labeled ‘alternative.’
A willingness to repackage, remix, and re-record old material saw The Cure churn out several compilations and live albums in between studio releases. However, as the 2000s dawned, the commercial appeal of the band had started to wane. The unevenness of material and production, as noted by the mixed reaction to their 2004 self-titled album, had critics divided on their direction.
Smith and Company returned to a recognizable form with 2008’s 4:13 Dream which featured “The Only One,” sounding suggestive, upbeat, and more ‘Cure-like’ across all 13 tracks than they had in many years. What no one could have predicted was the length of time the next new material would see the light of day.
16 years later, that day has come. November 1, 2024, saw the release of Songs of a Lost World, an eight-song tracklist that has inexplicably brought The Cure back to the forefront. While their visibility was elevated by their 2019 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the current lineup — Smith, Gallup, drummer Jason Cooper, keyboardist Roger O’Donnell, and guitarist Reeves Gabrels — have been performing this album’s material live for several years.
With this specific album, the work has been unabashedly and universally praised for Smith’s “gorgeously grim” songwriting and quite possibly the “most personal” work of his career. Not escaping the fact that the 65-year-old Smith is now facing mortality more squarely in the face than in previous outings, the heavy chill and anthemic guitar of Gabrels has brought back not only devotees but a wide-ranging following discovering The Cure as relevant in the streaming era as they were in radio 16 years ago.
In addition, The Cure celebrated their first Number 1 UK Official Charts release in 32 years for Songs of a Lost World. Smith noted on receiving the news: “It is enormously uplifting, genuinely heartwarming to experience such a wonderful reaction to the release of the new Cure album.
“To everyone who has bought it, listened to it, loved it, believed in us over the years — THANK YOU!”
-Amy Hughes
Photo: The Cure, 2013 (Mooncure 1970 via Wikimedia Commons)
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