The Cure‘s Robert Smith has revealed that the band have another new album in the works that’s “virtually finished”, with another in the pipeline.
The alt-rock icons are set to release their long-awaited fourth album ‘Songs Of A Lost World‘ – their first since 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream‘ – on November 1. Back in 2020, Smith told NME that the band were hard at work on “two new albums and an hour of noise”.
Now, in a full interview recorded for fans in conversation with Matt Everitt that’s due to be shared in full later today (Sunday October 13), Smith has revealed how ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ came to be, and details of leftover material on the way.
Smith spoke of how the band originally intended to release a record to celebrate their 40th anniversary.
“I felt that we should be summing up,” said Smith. “I thought, ‘The 40th anniversary of the band happens in 2018, and the 40th anniversary of the first album [‘Three Imaginary Boys’] was is 2019, so we’ll do something that sums up what the band is and where we got to. It was a grand plan – and grand plans generally don’t work very well, in my experience!”
He continued: “It wasn’t really being done for the right reasons. It was a bit ‘triumphal’, I suppose, looking back. The tone of it was wrong. As it turned out, what happened in 2018 was a great way to mark the anniversary of the band. It allowed me the time to think, ‘Why would we make a new album?’
“What happened in 2019 was much more natural and everything evolved out of that. There was no longer this idea that we were ‘celebrating’ something or marking something – it was becoming something much more artistic to honest, rather than something that was part of this whole idea of, ‘Here’s The Cure after 40 years – be amazed!’”
The Cure’s Robert Smith, 2024. Credit: Sam Rockman
Speaking of the wealth of material – including fan favourite ‘Another Happy Birthday’ aired by the band on tour last year, but not featured on ‘Songs Of A Lost World – Smith shed light on the wealth of songs that they had been working on.
“For the oldest song on this album, the demo was done in 2010,” he explained. “They stretched all the way through. The bulk of them, probably five of them, have been written since 2017. Three of them: one of them was 2010, one was 2011, another was 2013 or 2014. There were so many songs to choose from.
“This is jumping about, but we recorded about 25 or 26 songs in 2019. We recorded three albums in 2019; that’s always been the problem. I’ve tried to get three albums completed. After waiting this long, I was like, ‘Let’s just throw out Cure albums every few months!’ Everything with hindsight, you think, ‘Really? I could have done that a lot better’.”
Smith added: “It will work out this time. Having finished this one, the second one is virtually finished as well. The third one is a bit more difficult because, well if we get that far… Talking about the third album, you see what I mean? I just can’t help myself.”
This comes after Smith also recently explained the long wait for ‘Songs Of A Lost World‘ and meanings behind recent singles ‘Alone‘ and ‘A Fragile Thing‘, as well as explaining how he intended for The Cure to come to an end at one point in 2018, and revealing how he thought dynamic ticket pricing was “a scam” and “driven by greed“.
In a five-star review of ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, NME concluded: “Merciless? Yes, but there’s always enough heart in the darkness and opulence in the sound to hold you and place these songs alongside The Cure’s finest. The frontman suggested that another two records may be arriving at some point, but ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.”
The Cure are set to play two London shows – one for BBC Radio 2 on October 30 and another intimate album release show at Troxy on November 1.
English (US) · 