The Cure: Go into the twilit woods, alone
This week's newsletter was inspired by a spiritual experience.
I’m not going to tell you to touch grass, but if I were a doctor, I’d prescribe heading outside, sticking on your headphones, and marinating in music.
Seriously, turn off the news (it's only finger pointing and political pundits so lost in the data they have dehumanised the people), and let a serpentine melody slink itself around your brain as an antidote to the gloomiest of days.
For me, it's always the heaviest, saddest, or most beautifully grief-riddled music that matches bleak moments like this. (If you haven’t checked the headlines, I won’t spoil your day, but let’s just say that what's good for fossil fuel investors isn’t great for life on Earth). There's something about the eternal feeling of dread in melancholic songs that binds me to something far bigger than myself. Perhaps it's to our ancestors who in spite of everything, pushed back, conspired and fought for a better future.
Which brings me to my contender for album of the year...
I look up, and a moorhen stirs the grey silt beneath the dead leaves that drift slowly atop my local canal. The water is patient and still, except for the gothy birds little beak, flashing red beneath the water. As I get closer, it seems to synchronise with 'Endsong's disappearing guitar line. And it’s at this moment I inhale and realise how utterly immersed I am in Songs Of A Lost World, the first album from The Cure in sixteen years.
And I'm outside in the dark
Staring at the blood red moon
Remembering the hopes and dreams I had
And all I had to do
And wondering what became of that boy
And the world he called his own
I'm outside in the dark
Wondering how I got so old
Confession: this week’s newsletter, as you might have already guessed, was inspired by a spiritual experience. One that's up there with David Foster Wallace witnessing Federer in full flow. It was also about the discovery that - after a lot of research - listening to The Cure isn't best with the curtains closed or your eyes shut. Maybe this epiphany is a sign of the times or that I'm growing up. Or just that I needed to go get lost in nature.
Yes, this is probably already as overblown and self-consumed as the music writers you couldn’t stand in your youth. Thinking big and finding yourself writing when lightning zings through you is the critic’s curse. But... you have never really, never truly listened to Robert Smith’s voice, ricocheting between snares, awash in slow synths and menacing floor toms, until you've walked with it between the trees on a misty morning in the English countryside. There's nothing quite like it (and no, I wasn't listening to 'A Forest').
Try it. Look up your nearest ancient wood on Google Maps and set a reminder to make time for a woodland stroll with The Cure.
This listening experience is up there with bucket listers like hearing 'Wichita Lineman' on the radio whilst driving by the smoky mountains, walking along the Dorset coast to PJ Harvey in a storm, or blasting Bjork as you wander in the Icelandic countryside.
Context really is everything. Listening to Songs Of A Lost World again this morning, as I walked around a deserted reservoir with birds of prey circling overhead and robins darting into bare bushes, it felt even more profound under the heavy shadow of our new political reality.
Maybe I'm wrong. The record might not be as good as every fan and critic insists it is, maybe I/we/they was just caught up in the moment. Perhaps I need to live with it before forming an opinion but then again, sometimes - informed by the thousands of albums I've listened to in my life - I just know.
Seeing swans and ducks glide by, sensing the autumnal leaves mulch under my feet, it can't be as good as Disintegration, can it?
Perhaps it was the the pure joy of the first few listens to one of my favourite bands, fronted by someone whose silhouette was on a postcard, framed in the living room of my childhood home. Maybe I'm just nostalgic. And biassed. A client journalist for my inner goth.
How is anyone supposed to figure out how they truly feel about a record when caught in the throes of listening lust?! (Yes, I’m the so-called grouch who once got frustrated and claimed those two-listen reviews of surprise release albums by Radiohead and Beyoncé were the death of music journalism. However, this isn’t an album review) (Or is it?) (No, it probably isn't...) (And anyway, as I type this as my desk, I'm on my sixth listen).
I won't spoil the magic of the record with a critical dissection, nor step outside myself and stop floating along in its sombre grooves by switching into journo-headspace but just know, you don't need an expensive VIP arena ticket or fancy soundsystem to fully get the magic of this record. You just need to be surrounded by summer's decay, with half decent headphones on.^
Whilst many artists build immersive installations or digital playgrounds or fancy concepts involving elves or whatever, The Cure have - over their decades of exceptional work - mastered the art of soundscaping something that emerges inside of you as the music unfurls. And anyway, their lost world is a medicinal dose of hope and humanity in the face of hopelessness. It's an Atlantis, drifting in a romantic fug and a gentle fury, which is just what the doctor ordered.
P.S. Once you've taken yourself on a lonely walk in the nearest woods with this record to check if it really is one of the year's best, make yourself a cuppa and look up some of the anti-fascist, humanitarian, and climate justice orgs Robert Smith supports, to see how you can do something positive today. They're orgs such as MSF, EarthPercent, UNHCR, Amnesty, and more.
^ = if any brands are reading this, my decade-old Bowers + Wilkins PX7s are malfunctioning after countless train journeys and rainy walks, so I really need "review" some new headphones. To be fair, their occasional disconnection felt part of the listening experience in the brief moment I was hit by the silence of an empty tow-path.
Support your local record shop and grab a copy of the album, which looks set to goto number one in the UK this week. If you don't have an independent store nearby, grab it from Drift Records in Totnes here:
Drift
Or the marble edition from HMV here:
The Cure
