I have a very clear doctrine, Millionaire rockstars over a certain age and a certain level of bank balance should not be allowed to make any more records. The main reason being that they have very little left to say. There are of course some exceptions, (Bruce Springsteen and Nick Cave) but they are becoming few and far between.

Everything The Cure has produced in the last thirty years team has indicated that Robert Smith and his compatriots were going down that self-indulgent rabbit hole. There have been some snatches of brilliance (2004 self-titled dirge fest has some nuggets of delectable darkness) but the rest of their endeavours smack greatly of diminishing returns and creative plateau.

“Songs of a Lost World” is a perfect late career resurgence. It shares a considerable amount of DNA with their masterpiece “disintegration”, in that it perfectly balances the darkness with the light. The Cure are always at their best when there is streaks of positivity to offset the opulent negativity. They create fields of despair and delusion but interspersed with shots of redemption.

“Songs Of A Lost World” immaculately walks that fine line between sadness and joy. It is overflowing with personal emotion, but it isn’t all channelled down a depressive angst-ridden route (though there is quite a lot of soul searching darkness). This is The Cure once again doing their perfect balancing act of pleasure and pain, despair and hope and most importantly of pop and goth. He may well now be of pensionable age, but Robert Smith has suddenly got new things to say.

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