A melancholic resurrection

The British band The Cure released their first new music in 16 years on Thursday, the single Alone, and confirmed their long-awaited album would come out on November 1.

The melancholic song, almost seven minutes long, is the first track from Songs of a Lost World, The Cure's 14th studio album. Their last, 4:13 Dream, was released in 2008. The band had previewed songs from the new album during their Shows Of A Lost World tour, opening shows with Alone.

"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," frontman Robert Smith said in a statement.

"I had been struggling to find the right opening line for the right opening song for a while, working with the simple idea of 'being alone', always in the back of my mind this nagging feeling that I already knew what the opening line should be."

Smith added that he had remembered the poem Dregs by Ernest Dowson after finishing recording "and that was the moment that I knew the song - and the album - were real".

Alone begins with an over three minute-long instrumental before Smith starts singing: "This is the end of every song that we sing / The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears."

He goes on to sing about "birds falling out of our skies", "love falling out of our lives" as well as a "broken-voiced lament to call us home".

Britain's NME music publication called the song "epic and emotional" while the Guardian newspaper described it as "majestically wreathed in misery and despair", giving it four out of five stars.

The Cure, who made their debut in the late 1970s and are known for their post-punk as well as darker melancholic tracks, had long teased a new album, with Smith revealing the Songs of a Lost World record title in 2022. Reuters