Monday's Long Songs

The Cure's comeback with their latest/ last album Songs Of A Lost World was been one of last week's major musical news. On Friday night they played a live streamed gig at The Troxy and then on Saturday a similar one for Radio 2, a mix of songs from the new album and Cure classics. Both were stunning. 

In the 80s I wasn't a massive Cure fan. Things then were very tribal and The Cure fell on the other side of a line that sometimes seemed to be drawn between them and other bands. I liked many of their singles and bought Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me in 1987, a seventy five minute double album led by what may be their best single- Just Like Heaven- and crammed full of singular album tracks, but never went the full hog. Since then though their songs and music have become more and more important and I've found myself loving their songs more as time has gone than I ever did back in the day. Robert Smith's songs and voice, his sweet melancholy and  those post- punk guitars coupled with Simon Gallup's Hooky inspired basslines, have sounded more and more relevant. In early 2022, in the aftermath of Isaac's death, Pictures Of You became one of those songs that broke me into tiny grief stricken pieces. Watching the band on TV on Saturday night that song did it all over again. It's a song that I'm sure could reduce perfectly balanced and obscenely happy people to tears so it's impact on me isn't too surprising; it's got a sadness to it that is Smith's crowning moment- the song was written on finding some photos of his wife Mary in the ashes that were left after a house fire in the late 80s. For me, it's become about all the photos I have of Isaac, and that are now all we have of him, the photos and the memories. It's one of those songs.

Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)

The new Cure album is the first for sixteen years, a majestic eight song swansong that places grief, loss, mortality and reflection at the centre of Robert Smith's late middle aged world. Both his parents and his brother died during the recording of the album and his thoughts on mortality are the centre piece of the record. The playing and the songs are all as good as anything anyone of that generation of bands has made in recent years, better than anyone else maybe. It's a beautiful, emotive album- black and white and shot through with all the shades of grey, desolate and windswept but magnificent and enveloping. It feels like a eulogy- in the best way, a celebration cut with loss. At the end is Endsong, a ten minute masterpiece, an exercise in closure and wonderful, bleak beauty.