In the nearly eleven-year existence of Destroy//Exist, we haven’t had the opportunity to sample a new song from The Cure, as their last original material was released 16 years ago. Their 2008 album, 4:13 Dream, faced heavy scrutiny from those who expected much from the greatest band in dark music, and it received significant criticism. While some of that criticism was justified, the album wasn't as bad as many believed back then. Still, now in 2024, it feels like the true essence of The Cure has returned for the first time since the early 2000s.
Alone is the opening track of The Cure’s upcoming fourteenth studio album, Songs of a Lost World, set to release on November 1st, 2024. The song goes into themes of loneliness and the existential despair that life plentifully provides, presenting a dark and poetic expression. From the first listen, it's clear that Robert Smith's voice has lost none of its magnetism, while creatively, the track brings forward the band's signature blend of existential romanticism and inherent darkness, in a way reminiscent of albums like Disintegration and Bloodflowers.
At nearly seven minutes long, Alone features an extended, imposing introduction, with Smith’s vocals coming in halfway through to seamlessly tie the atmosphere together. The purely heartfelt vocal adds a layer of genuine darkness, and presents the mesmerism of The Cure in a manner which feels effective and haunting.
Robert Smith describes: “It’s the track that unlocked the record; as soon as we had that piece of music recorded I knew it was the opening song, and I felt the whole album come into focus.
“I had been struggling to find the right opening line for the right opening song for a while, working with the simple idea of ‘being alone’, always in the back of my mind this nagging feeling that I already knew what the opening line should be… as soon as we finished recording I remembered the poem ‘Dregs’ by the English poet Ernest Dowson… and that was the moment when I knew the song—and the album—were real.”
ZR