2024-09-29 16:59:31
After 16 long years, British rock band The Cure released a new song. The single titled Alone foreshadows the expected album Songs of a Lost World, which should follow on November 1st.
The single Alone from the forthcoming album of The Cure. Photo: Reuters | Video: Capitol Records
The Cure last released 4:13 Dream in 2008. From the upcoming one, they have already played some songs at recent concerts, including the nearly seven-minute melancholic song Alone, combining electric guitars, dense drum beats and the emotionally charged sound of synthesizers.
“Thanks to this song, we found our way to the record. Once we recorded it, I knew it was going to be the opening song, and I already had an idea of where to go with the whole album,” says the group’s 65-year-old frontman Robert Smith. “I was looking for the right opening words for the right opening song for a long time. I was working with a simple idea when a person is simply alone. And all the while I had the persistent feeling that I already knew what the words would be,” he describes.
When they recorded the music, the singer remembered the poem Dregs by the decadent 19th century English writer Ernest Dowson. “I knew that morning that this was the way to go and that we were really going to make the album,” he adds.
The song begins with an instrumental passage of more than three minutes. Only then will Smith’s voice be heard. “This is the end of every song we sing / Ashes from the fire, starlight dimmed by tears,” he sings. In another section, he mentions birds falling from the sky or “love fading from our lives”.
According to the British music magazine NME, The Cure’s first single after a sixteen-year hiatus sounds “epic and emotional”. The critic of the British newspaper Guardian gave the composition four stars out of five, according to which it is “magnificently full of suffering and despair”. The structure of the new song reminds him of Plainsong, the opening song from the album Disintegration released in 1989.
The Cure, sometimes described as a post-punk band, debuted in the late 1970s. Dark, melancholic songs are typical for them. Although they haven’t recorded an album in years, they have recently given two concerts in the Czech Republic, most recently the year before last in a packed O2 arena in Prague. There, among the four new releases, they performed the single Alone live.