Stories
Reports, interviews, essays, and opinions about music and its connection to business and society.
Songs Of A Lost World, Indeed
The Cure’s new album, «Songs Of A Lost World», resonates around the world. Let’s take a closer look.
What else can I write that hasn’t been put down on paper? Yes, Songs Of A Lost World, the new album by The Cure, the first in 16 years, is a masterpiece. And one wonders what diabolical pact this Robert Smith must have made to still sound 25 at 65.
The album has since climbed to number one in the album charts in both the USA and the UK. Comparisons were drawn with the band's undisputed opus magnum: Disintegration from 1989. As ever, The Cure sounded dripping with melancholy and full of world-weariness. And in general, no one disagrees with this conclusion.
Transience is a constant companion throughout the album. In I Can Never Say Goodbye, Smith heartbreakingly deals with the death of his brother. «As a memory of the first time, in the stillness of a teardrop / As you hold me for the last time in the dying of the light,» laments Smith in And Nothing Is Forever.
Songs Of A Lost World is a desperate beacon, written by an ageing man in an ever faster-changing world. What is actually the perfect template for something cringeworthy works because Smith laments but doesn’t point fingers. It has always been that way with The Cure: profoundly personal but with a way of finding yourself in the songs.
When I asked on the Threads platform why the album resonates with people, Alex Storer replied: «I’ve experienced a lot of loss, so the lyrics speak to me personally on that level, but it seems to go further than that; it’s about the passing of time, the sudden feeling of being old(er) and the realisation that the world you've grown up in and been shaped by has changed for the worse.»
And Chris Jakins added: «The message may be bleak, but there's hope in the fact that they’re still saying it and sounding so good.»
And my personal favourites among the answers were provided by these two users:
I remember walking the streets of Zurich at the age of 18 with the album Bloodflowers playing on endless repeat. The soul bathed in adolescent despair, accompanied by The Cure.
Even more than Disintegration, I see a direct kinship between Songs Of A Lost World and 2000’s Bloodflowers. Both have this meandering quality; both take their time in the sprawling compositions and celebrate a warming sadness.
The success of Songs Of A Lost World is both surprising and natural. The Cure have almost prophetically chosen the perfect time for the release: at the turn of an era, while dreams and hopes were shattered in the US elections and a shock wave of bewilderment was sent to Europe. Instead of anger, discouragement and disorientation are on the agenda today. And this album is the perfect soundtrack to the question: What is happening to us right now?
At the same time, The Cure deliver the perfect anachronism, at least musically. In a music industry in which algorithms increasingly influence songwriting, the band creates a bastion of escapist, writhing anthems. It often takes minutes for Smith’s voice to ring out. Hooks in the first three seconds? Not a chance!
The ultimate pinnacle of despair and escapade remains the overwhelming Endsong, the album’s closing track.
It’s all gone, it’s all gone
Nothing left of all I loved
It all feels wrong
It’s all gone, it’s all gone, it’s all gone
No hopes, no dreams, no world
No, I, I don’t belong
No, I don't belong here
Songs Of A Lost World is unwieldy, wants you to take your time. It’s a stew album: the longer it simmers, the more often you stir it, the tastier it becomes.
This is anything but a matter of course today, especially for younger generations. And yet, the album also resonates with them. Characterised by a drastic pandemic and fears about the future, a new wave of melancholy and thoughtfulness has emerged in music, inspired by post-punk and dark wave.
Society and young people today are too fragmented to make generalised statements. And generalisations are always dangerous. But the days of escaping into hedonism seem to be over. Hangover mood. The challenges are too great to simply ignore.
The Cure and their Songs Of A Lost World create catharsis not through ignorance of the world but through empathy. Robert Smith knows how to say with his songs: I see you and feel your pain. It’s okay to feel desperate.
The Scariest Song I Know
This track always lets an icy chill run down my spine.
I usually don’t care about the «spooky season» at all. I’m neither a fan of horror movies nor have I ever dressed up for a Halloween party.
However, I wondered: What’s the scariest song I know?
A song that really and utterly lets a chill run down my spine because it sounds so haunting.
So, I started to dig around in my library, going straight to the darkest stuff I could think of. I was convinced some black metal artist would have an answer ready. Behemoth’s Blow Your Trumpets Gabrial, maybe? Or Den Vrede Makt by Whoredome Rife?
Not really; black metal’s shock value is entirely performative, aimed at Christian conservatives. Something that’s obviously designed to be artificially scary and violent can’t be the answer. It’s like a slasher movie: The more blood, the funnier.
My next station—goth music—often has a similar problem. When it tries to be scary, it becomes obvious. And anyway, goth music is more melancholic, more sad than scary.
But then I remembered being at this goth party years ago. There was this song that first seemed out of place, sounding rather unsuspecting.
Comprehending Nick Cave
Musical icons and rockstars are usually out of reach. Nick Cave, however, is close and intimate. And he defies simplicity. At his concert in Zurich, I begin to understand the fascination.
Nick Cave has always been an enigma to me. Ever-present in my subconsciousness, yet never fully in focus. A living legend, a phenomenon I knew was around but one I never found access to in a meaningful way. And I also know there are many who would consider all of this some sort of blasphemy.
But how does one, in 2024, start to understand the vast wealth of a creative career that has lasted over half a decade by now? It seems like a futile exercise to recapitulate without doing the 67-year-old Australian gross injustice.
There are the broad, well-known, and certainly tragic stages: a long Heroine addiction, the loss of two of his children. But it feels voyeuristic and wrong to reduce an artist to only these moments.
Multi-Dimensional
There are other intrigues about Nick Cave worth exploring. His long-standing obsession with the Old and New Testament, his relationship with religion or God, or the fact that he has opened up his mind since 2018 in «The Red Hand Files», a blog/newsletter where Cave personally answers fan’s questions. Or as he describes it:
«The Red Hand Files has burst the boundaries of its original concept to become a strange exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency.»
These files are a treasure trove of insight into a contemplative and complex man: Cave describes himself as a minor-c conservative, voiced disdain for organised religion and atheism, radical bi-partisan politics and woke culture and supported the Masha Amini protests in Iran, as well as trans rights.
Now, I know, even simply listing these keywords defies the purpose, stripping away the thoughts and arguments that led to those convictions, and are therefore pretty useless. Empty shells, meaningless, ready to be attributed by our own biases definitions.
But it ultimately raises the question of whether «The Red Hand Files» may even be Cave’s boldest artistic work today. An antidote to simple answers in populistic times—in defiance of one-dimensionality.
Stubborn Complexity
However, all of this fades away into the background on October 22nd. On this particular evening, all attention flows towards the most recognised art of the multi-disciplinarian: music.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are inviting to a show at Zurich’s «Hallenstadion»—in their bags not only decades worth of material but also Wild God, the 18th (sic!) album released in August. Ten new songs—universally acclaimed. Andrew Trendell summarised for the «NME» that «once the godfather of goth, now a freewheelin' preacher of joy, Cave elevates above the grief on this colourful 18th album.»
I don’t dare to make a profound statement about the album—too unfamiliar am I with the heavy-bearing catalogue.
Yet, one notion I can’t shake, what I always stumbled upon, is a stubborn complexity. The compositions demand full commitment and attention, yet the signature is always clearly audible: from Where The Wild Roses Grow, the popular duet with Kylie Minogue, to Red Right Hand, becoming widely popular as the theme song to the series Peaky Blinders, and even the sinister, rambling epos that is The Mercy Seat.
For what it‘s worth, the decision is simple: Either you like the slight detachment of Cave‘s often more spoken than sung lyrics from the instruments… or you don‘t.
The Intimate Icon
Now I‘m sitting in Hallenstadion‘s sector G1, where the media has their spots, sitting left seen from the stage, with small tables to put down laptops, pens and paper. It‘s been years since I‘ve last sat here.
As I sip on my beer, glad I‘ll be (almost) comfortably seated for the following hours, I watch the stadium fill with people and a sliver of anticipation. But the gratitude wouldn’t last that long.
Into this still-settling scene drop The Murder Capital, a young post-punk band from Dublin, Ireland. Sometimes sad but often loud, raw, and angry, they fought an uphill battle against an ageing audience. Polite applause but few excited shouts.
At this point, you might be wondering: Where are the photos?
Unfortunately, our photographer, Evelyn Kutschera, came down with the flu, and we couldn‘t find a substitute on such short notice. But here‘s a visual break from the last concert in Zurich in 2017:
Coming back from grabbing another drink, my seat was taken by an elderly gentleman. We started talking, and he—like me—never had seen Nick Cave live before. He was convinced by a fan to come. We debated the downfall of journalism, especially in culture reporting, and about Thomas Wydler, the Swiss drummer of The Bad Seeds.
And then, for the next two and a half hours, I wished I didn‘t have a seat at all. I watched with envy down onto the crowd in front of the stage—closer to this explosion of energy and presence.
With nonchalance and verve, Cave moves up and down the stage, getting close to his fans while pleading and shouting and crying and screaming and singing. His music demands attention, undivided, and it gets it—one way or another. Throwing himself into some action poses for photos, Cave then said: «Now, put these fucking things away.»
The hall exploded with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. They played through every phase of their oeuvre, from the archaic, brutal post-punk beginnings like 1984‘s From Her to Eternity or the hellish performance of Tupelo to the more experimental, genre-bending songs like Conversation, which morphs from brooding spoken-word to this almighty gospel.
And when Cave and his Bad Seeds got quiet, as in Bright Horses, the thousands of people became so silent one could hear a needle drop. Such deep was the emotion.
It‘s hard to do it all justice, and it‘s harder to make sense of it all. There is this rockstar somehow out of reach on that stage but at the same time as intimate and raw as a friend. A musical icon that isn‘t beyond us mere mortals but suffers and celebrates publicly.
Experiencing the absolute wildness of this show, I begin to understand people‘s fascination for Nick Cave. And that the «Red Hand Files» aren‘t some performative stunt but results from an inevitable need for connection. A need for authenticity, a desire to let things be complicated and hard and painful, and without an easy answer or cure.
But also a need to be seen, to be recognised as a human with all our difficulties and struggles. And a need for love. Nick Cave ended the concert alone at the piano, serenaded by the audience, with an Into My Arms.
But I believe in love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
