posted: 2024-06-28 The Cure The Cure

This is the first new music from the Cure since 2000’s Bloodflowers, and their debut for Ross Robinson’s I Am label, with Robinson also climbing aboard as co-producer with Robert Smith. Smith had allegedly “retired”, but the recuperation period seems to have worked wonders because this strikes a near-perfect balance between the various facets of the band’s history.

As you’d expect, there are great fog-banks of opulent gloom, which come rolling down the sinister corridors of “Anniversary” and boil up through the slow-motion churn of “The Promise,” but however racked and agonised Smith’s singing and lyrics become, the album always feels carefully shaped and balanced.

There’s nothing here as gleefully skittish as “The Love Cats,” but “The End of the World” is as nifty a single as they’ve ever devised, while the closing track, “Going Nowhere,” is an elegant and baleful ballad. A masterly performance all round.

Adam Sweeting, The Guardian