Alone—The Cure
#365Songs: September 28th
October 27th, 2008.
George W. Bush was still President. America was trapped in two unpopular wars. The Dow Jones closed at 8,175. Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber were household names, and Barack Obama was eight days away from becoming our first Black President. A few weeks earlier at a Town Hall, an ignorant old white Minnesota lady referred to Obama as an “Arab,” to which the GOP Nominee John McCain said, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about,” and the crowd applauded.
That was a long, long time ago. Another life ago.
October 27th, 2008 was also the last time The Cure released an album, 4:13 Dream. Though my favorite all-time band, I don’t recall hearing a single song. I missed it completely.
September 26th, 2024.
Joe Biden is still President. America is trapped in two unpopular wars. The Dow Jones closed at 42,175. JD Vance and Laura Loomer are household names, and Kamala Harris is potentially 39 days away from becoming our first (Black) Woman President. A few weeks earlier at a political rally, an ignorant old white man rambled on and on about cat ladies, Hannibal Lecter, Haitian migrants eating family dogs and cats, windmills killing birds, and questioning whether Kamala ever officially worked at McDonalds 40 years ago, and the crowd applauded.
September 26th, 2024 was also the day The Cure released Alone, the first song off their upcoming album Songs of a Lost World — a reminder of why they’re my favorite all-time band.
This is the end of every song that we sing
The fire burn out of ash
And the stars grow dim with tears
Cold and afraid, the ghost of all that we’ve been
Earlier this year, I wrote about Plainsong off of 1989’s opus Disintegration: “The mood setter, the dark hallway that takes us deep inside Smith’s pain. It’s too dark to be emo, too emo to be dark.”
I could write the same about Alone, and if the rest of the album falls in line this could be their finest work in 40 years. I know, I know, don’t get carried away, you’ll say, it’s just one track, you’ll say, they’re old, you’ll say. But this is The Cure, not U2.
But there’s something else here.
I wrote in that Plainsong post, “Disgruntled, unsettled, and overwhelmed by life, Robert Smith went off on his own, ate a lot of LSD, and wrote his opus.”
Now contrast that to the backdrop for the new album. Today, Alexis Petridis wrote this for The Guardian: “Smith clearly has personal reasons for fixating on mortality — he’s talked about how losing both his parents and his older brother during the lengthy process of making Songs for a Lost World shaped the material, and we’ll clearly find out just how much in the fullness of time. But as an opening salvo, a teaser for what’s to come, the overall message of Alone to his audience seems to be: abandon hope all ye who think the Cure’s best song is The Lovecats or Friday I’m in Love. But for those who ultimately prefer the Cure when they’re wreathed in misery and despair — as you suspect Smith does — Alone is quite the appetiser.”
In 1989, Robert Smith was going through something.
In 2024, we’re all going through something.
We tossed with bitter dregs to our emptiness
And the birds falling out of our sky
And the words falling out of our mouth
And here is to love, so much love
Falling out of our lives
Hopes and dreams are gone
The end of every song
Robert Smith’s voice is the only thing time hasn’t darkened these past 16 years — from the Trump years to the pandemic, American-funded genocides to the most vicious political divisions since the Civil War, an insurrection attempt to Big Tech’s takedown of our collective mental health. We’ve all lost so much during these years — friends, family, jobs, money, freedom, hope.
That’s the thing about The Cure. Though sprinkled with a few upbeat happy tracks and love songs over the years, they’ve always been dark, prescient, goth-ish, and unapologetically themselves. You’ll be hard pressed to mistake The Cure for any other band.
About Alone, Stereogum’s Tom Breihan wrote, “It’s an elegant, luxurious seven-minute grief-wallow with drums that hit like velvet sledgehammers and keyboards that sigh like they’re looking at old videos of dead family members. Robert Smith, the only person on earth who convincingly sounds like Robert Smith, sings about the world ending and turning out to be nothing but a dream. It’s just a beautiful song.”
Just as with Plainsong, Alone is very much about the end of the world. Birds may be falling from the sky, but it’s not the windmills killing them. It’s us, our inability to take seriously our impact on the planet. We sort of miss the point about a lot of things these days, always in our own way, ensuring our worst, most unthinkable fates. This is a dark song for a dark world — an almost slow rolling atmospheric Godspeed! You Black Emperor-esque composition set to Smith’s voice.
But it all stops and I prefer that we would never change
And when it all stops we always thought that we would stay the same
But it all stops and because our eyes asleep
To dream of boy and girl who dream the world is nothing but a dream
Where did it go
Where did it go
Broken voice will mend
To call us home
This is this end of every song we sing
Where did it go
Where did it go
Time is a dark feeling, to quote the band Florist. I grew up with The Cure. Hearing 65-year-old Robert Smith sounding like 22-year-old Robert Smith warps my sense of things, but it’s in his grief that I find myself most at home. It’s in his lyrics where I feel the burden of time, the mounting losses, the limits of what’s left. We’re closer to the end than the beginning these days, it seems, but for 6 minutes and 48 minutes today (x18 repeat listens) I felt a peace in the madness knowing that the soundtrack for the end of the world can still sound so fucking beautiful.
Where did it go
Where did it go
Hope a voice will mend to call us home
This is the end of every song we sing
Alone
~
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