It looks like The Cure are finally about to announce their long-awaited new album, as the band has cleared out their website and announced the release date for their first album in 16 years.
In August, Robert Smith and his label announced the release of a charity 12-inch single featuring live versions of two new songs the band had played on their recent tour. After all of the limited edition singles sold out, Smith suggested in a subsequent tweet that something else was coming. The singer simply wrote: “And then…”
“And then…” seems to be the Lost World SongsTheir long-awaited new album and their first since 2008. 4:13 dreamAfter the band's official website was wiped clean earlier this month — the front page is now just “The Cure” with a link to sign up via email — fans in the UK received a postcard in the mail containing the engraved words “Songs of a Lost World” and a set of Roman numerals that, when converted to European date/month format, translate to November 1, 2024.
Additionally, a promotional poster for the upcoming album has been placed outside a secluded pub in Smith's hometown of Crawley, England, Stereogum reported.
During their long Shows of a Lost World tour in recent years, The Cure played half a dozen potential songs for the album—”A Fragile Thing,” “Endsong,” “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” “Alone,” “And Nothing Is Forever,” and “Another Happy Birthday”; live versions of “I Can Never Say Goodbye” and “And Nothing Is Forever” later appeared on the 12-inch single.
Neither Smith nor the band's social media accounts have acknowledged the postcards or officially announced the album, but that's likely to change soon, as November 1 is just six weeks away.
Smith has been working on the new album for at least the past half-decade, providing Rolling Stone With progress report in 2019.
“The other thing is we just did demos, and the band had some songs that they gave me to listen to, and turn them into songs that I couldn’t play. So I feel like we got to explore them for a few days as well, in the studio now that we’re playing together again just to see if something stands out,” Smith said.
“I really want the album to work in a way that the really great Cure albums — my favorite albums — work as pieces of music. I want people to listen to the album from beginning to end and feel like they’re somewhere during that time.”
