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Haunted by bereavement and disintegration (and Disintegration), The Cure’s Songs Of A Lost World – their first album in 16 years – is finally with us. But what’s it all about? And will it be Robert Smith’s last? “Often seen as the soundtrack to an eternally doomy adolescence,” judges Victoria Segal, “The Cure might just be coming of age.”

The beginning and the end: Robert Smith on-stage with The Cure, Primavera Sound, Barcelona, June 1, 2012.

Simone Cecchetti/Corbis via Getty Images

THERE IS NO blue plaque at The Railway in Crawley, no photographs celebrating the most culturally significant moment in the pub’s history: the first official gig by The Cure (formerly Easy Cure) in 1978. The band’s original drummer, Lol Tolhurst, has spoken to an old friend on Crawley Town Council about organising some kind of commemorative sign at the pub formerly known as The Rocket – “I keep telling him I’d come over and help open it,” he laughs from his home in Los Angeles – but the portents aren’t good. When Tolhurst and his wife were recently visiting family in Crawley, first Cure bassist Michael Dempsey picked them up from Gatwick and drove them around the old haunts, including the pub. “The first thing the barman said to my wife was, ‘You have to take that hat off if you come in here,’” recalls Tolhurst dryly. “It was very Crawley.”

Yet The Rocket has once again become embroiled in The Cure’s epic story. On September 13, a dark poster appeared outside, reading “Songs Of A Lost World” and a date: “I. XI. MMXXIV.” A mail-drop to fans of similarly embossed postcards followed. Sixteen years after the release of 4:13 Dream, it seemed as if The Cure’s long-promised fourteenth album was becoming a reality, a moment even the most ardent keepers of the Faith had started to doubt would happen. On social media, it was pointed out generations of fans had never experienced the real-time release of a new Cure album; some of the kids wearing Boys Don’t Cry T-shirts to the 2023 shows weren’t even born.

Listening to Songs Of A Lost World, it’s clear why The Cure launched it at their point of origin. It’s a record about endings, about loss and grief, about the compromises and confusions that cling to a person as they move through their lives, warping and distorting their original intentions. There is real poignancy in looking back to a time and place where life was still a clean slate, before you find yourself – as Smith does on the closing track, Endsong – looking up at the sky and wondering where you’ve gone. Maybe it does matter if we all die, after all.