HUNKER DOWN FOR ALBUMS 14,15 AND 16?
IN 2018, Robert Smith said he would quit music if a new Cure album didn’t appear in 2019, ideally around the time of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. That possibility looks slight at press time, but in the meantime ambitions for the first Cure record since 2008’s 4:13 Dream have amplified. Speaking to Rolling Stone in October, Smith revealed that the album, working title Live From The Moon, would comment on the excitement and optimism of the 1969 lunar mission, and the following disappointment that the technological world it promised never arrived. He also admitted that the political, social and ecological crises affecting the planet have shocked him out of the age-unaware reverie of a successful childless rock star. Though he declared the album finished as far back as last March, he spoke of re-recording and rewriting, with lyrics being a particular problem, and mood-enhancing in-studio props including 1969 NASA memorabilia, a 50-year-old guitar and an illuminated model of the moon hanging from the ceiling.
Around the same time, Smith spoke to Mexican news site Zócalo, saying the band were actually working on three albums: the first would be “dark and emotional” songs of recognisably Cure-like nature and inspired by family bereavement; the second would include live, spontaneous “free” recordings; the third would be a “crazy” album of noise experiments.
In-band omertˆ has been observed throughout the process, with glimmers of insight gleaned from band members’ interviews to musicians’ magazines and websites. Guitarist Reeves Gabrels told Premier Guitar in October 2018, “I’m there to support the singer, so it’s not about putting your foot on the monitor and pushing it out… The Cure is a different beast than anything I’ve ever been a part of.” Drummer Jason Cooper told French drumming mag Batterie in 2017 that all the group present basic demos, but most musical ideas come from Smith and Simon Gallup; a year later Gallup gave further insight into the group’s methods when he told Singletrack cycling magazine that he always has his bike on hand to fit some riding around rehearsals. Most significantly, in May 2019, keyboardist Roger O’Donnell told SiriusXM’s talk show Volume: “I said to Robert a couple of years ago, we have to make one more record, and it has to be the saddest record that’s ever been made, and the most dramatic. And I think it will be.” O’Donnell also said he believed it would be the last Cure album.
“It has to be the best thing,” Smith told Rolling Stone’s Kory Grow. “I can’t do the whole, ‘That’ll do.’ I’ve never felt that with a Cure album, but with this one in particular…”