The Cure

The 16-year wait for their 14th record is finally over, and with that 16-year wait, comes 16 years of weight, of loss, of grief, of struggle, all permeating the lyrical and instrumental content with a deep gravity that will be all too familiar for those also scarred and bruised by life’s indiscriminate knocks.

Crawling out of West Sussex, Robert Smith’s crew have always been flag-bearers for the disaffected and disheartened. They might have flirted with the charts, crossing over to a more pop-adjacent crowd with singles such as ‘Lovecats’, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, and ‘Friday I’m In Love’ but it’s in those darkly wrought sounds of hearts bursting and souls being dredged thin that the Goth rock forebears have really worked their magic.

And, thankfully, this sounds monumentally like The Cure. At times, like the spectral Cure of ‘Disintegration’ and also reminiscent of ‘Pornography’s cold heaviness and virtual industrial crush. The guitars flit from icy harmonics to amp-energising, throaty roars and it often moves at the steady plod of migrating elephants, occasionally rattling forward with an energy as much driven by despair as it is by a need to express their vitality. Most importantly, however, it sounds absolutely huge. The continent-spanning emissions juxtaposing intimate lyrical confessions as beautifully as only these masters can.