★★★★★
On one level, The Cure’s first studio album since 2008 is strangely unshowy: there are only eight songs, so it’s finished in less than 50 minutes. What those eight songs say, however, is as important as anything as Robert Smith has ever sung.
Not since David Bowie’s Blackstar has an album been so expressive about mortality. If Blackstar was about Bowie’s own death, The Cure have created a mortality record whose beauty lies in perfectly expressing the need to savour love while we can.