Just like Heavenagain: The Cure returns with first new song in 16 years

The Cure has been found again.Robert Smith and his band of not-so-merry men are back in their inimitable mope mode with “Alone,” their first new song in 16 years, which was released on Thursday.And even after such a long wait, the single takes it sweet — or make that, sullen — time to unfold over nearly seven minutes.In fact, as the group’s absorbing atmospherics — shades of their 1989 classic LP “Disintegration” — set the melancholy mood, it takes three minutes and 22 seconds before Smith even sings a single word.But finally, he comes in with his tortured croon: “This is the end of every song that we sing/The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears/Cold and afraid, the ghosts of all that we’ve been/We toast with bitter dregs, to our emptiness.”Inspired by Ernest Dowson’s poem “Dregs,” “Alone” is an ode “to all the love falling out of our lives,” tailor-made for your doldrums after your next breakup.I mean, did you think that Smith — even though he’s been married to the same woman, Mary Poole, since 1988 — would all of a sudden get happy at 65?It’s comforting to know that some things — and some alt-rock icons — don’t change.Accurately described in the song as a “broken-voices lament,” “Alone” is the first single and opening track of “Songs of a Lost World” — the Cure’s first studio album since 2018’s “4:13 Dream” — which will be released on Nov.

1.The LP was also the name of the band’s 2022-2023 tour that served as a sort of victory lap after they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.The Cure performed “Alone” during the tour before releasing the song that would, at long last, set off their upcoming album.“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,” Smith said in a press release announcing the new single.“I had been ...