The Cure member Robert Smith recently talked about about a trio of LPs in particular: the ghostly Pornography, from 1982, the sad, stately Disintegration, from 1989, and Songs of a Lost World, the group’s upcoming 14th album. All three draw on periods of intense pain and confusion in the life of the frontman, functioning as roadmaps as Smith makes his way from the shadows to the daylight.
During the recording of Pornography, a 23-year-old Smith was struggling with excessive LSD and alcohol consumption, coupled with the pressure of building on The Cure’s early success. Disintegration was an even starker chronicling of strife in the band, an instability fuelled by the alcoholism of Lol Tolhurst, Smith’s fellow founding member and one-time best friend, who would be sacked soon afterwards.
Then comes Songs of a Lost World, framed by the singer’s grief after the deaths of his parents and his older brother, Richard, and by his general sense of the waters rising as he comes to terms with the ageing process.
“Death and dying becomes more [prevalent] every day, unfortunately. When you’re younger you romanticise it. Then it starts happening to your immediate family and friends. Then it’s a different thing,” the 65-year-old told the BBC presenter Matt Everitt at Abbey Road studios in London.
The title Songs of a Lost World comes from Smith’s sense that humanity peaked in the mid-1970s and has been in descent ever since. He was born in 1959 and was 10 when the moon landing took place. In those days technological advancements promised a bright future. His lost world is a place of optimism quite different from our present-day dystopia.
“I still feel like that 10-year-old kid staring at the moon,” Smith told Everitt. “The world seemed to stall at that moment. I grew up in the glorious 30 years from the end of the second World War. The world I was born into was getting incrementally better. It seemed it was on an upward trajectory. The moon landing was part of that. I turned 16 in 1975, and it seemed like the world stalled and it’s been travelling down ever since. That’s the core … that’s the beating heart of the album.”
