The Cure’s first album in 16 years finds frontman Robert Smith “outside in the dark, wondering how I got so old”. But buoyed by the familiar tidal swirls of reverb-y guitar and battered drums, the 65-year-old goth master’s voice doesn’t sound a day older than it did when he was affecting to be equally world-weary back in his Eighties pomp. Reassuringly, all these years later, he still styles himself like a burned Fraggle and writes songs that claw their way up through the mud to find the aching romance in every doomed thing.
So despite his claim back in 2018 that he’s turning into a “grumpy old man”, Smith still taps into a specific teenage intensity in his music. “Every time you kiss me I could die,” he moans on “A Fragile Thing” in a lipstick smudge of devotion precision-brewed to transport the band’s original fans back to their own youth asking – as he does on opener “Alone” – “where did it go?”
