Robert Smith has provided a few more details about the burst of Cure albums he’s been talking about for a while.
The Cure leader was talking on BBC 6 Music after a triumphant headlining set at Primavera Sound last weekend. It was the band’s first live show for eighteen months and saw them delight both casual fans and the hardcore, breaking out the greatest hits, whilst dropping some rarities that haven’t been played for decades.
The festival was also notable for a surprise set by Olivia Rodrigo during which Smith made a guest appearance. The pair debuted a new collaboration, What’s Wrong With Me, which will be on her next album.
So it certainly seems to be all go again in Cure world, as Smith explained: “We did the initial recording of Songs Of A Lost World in 2019. We did record three albums' worth of songs. So the second one's done. So that's about to be delivered to Universal. The third one is really, really upbeat. It's really poppy. But it doesn't compare melodically to the stuff that Olivia does. It's more my idea of Cure pop. It's probably 20 BPM slower than anything she does.”
He continued: “What we've been putting out in the last couple of years, it's really rockin', it's bangin'. But the next one, if anything, it's more dismal than Songs Of A Lost World. I mean, ‘dismal’, that's a horrible word to use! But it's quite dark emotionally. It's related to Songs Of A Lost World, but it's a different perspective on things.”
Smith also talked about the Rodrigo link-up. “So I did the song with her, but I didn’t really expect to be singing it live. It’s just kind of happened that we were playing yesterday and she just said ‘how about we do it live’ and I said ‘ok’. I didn’t think about it too much because if I did I’d say it was impossible because we’ve got another show tomorrow and this is a run of 30 odd shows… and I should be in bed.”
He was effusive in his praise of Rodrigo, saying: “She’s so good. She is genuinely fantastic as a songwriter, a singer and as a performer. I’m slightly in awe at how easy she finds it all. It’s not really comparable to how I do things."
"It’s partly an age thing,” he mused. “At 23 you’ve got a lot more energy than someone of my age. But it comes across as very effortless, very natural and I’m not really a natural performer. I agonise over songs a lot of the time in later life, (whilst) she’s banging out songs, saying ‘what do you think of this?’ And I’m like ‘it’s great’ and I’m not really sure about it, (but then) it took me 16 years to get the last album done!”
