Ok, so we need to talk about the new Cure album.
Because in an alarming confirmation of how much we all live our online lives in a little echo-chamber, all my various social media feeds have determined that Giles is the sort of person who needs to hear what everyone thinks about The Cure’s first studio album in 16 years, Songs Of A Lost World … and is going to hound him until he gets off his backside and listens to it himself.
Now, The Cure are a band that I suspect you’ll either love or loathe, and if you’re in the latter camp, you can safely disregard this Daily Reminder and go about your day, listening to whatever non-Cure music floats your boat. See you tomorrow!
👋🏻
Still here?
Ok, so if you’re in the former camp, like me, I wonder what your impression has been?
If I took the algorithm and all the media I’ve been fed at face value, I’d find it’s “the best thing they’ve done since Disintegration (1989)” … I’d have discovered that it’s #1 in the charts already (a feat that Disintegration itself couldn’t pull off) and I’d have seen that pretty much everybody reckons it’s just about the best thing they’ve ever heard.
🙄
But after a couple of concerted listens, it left me cold, and it’s not just because it’s lacking in the melodious, shimmery guitar hooks that plucked at my heart strings in the 1990s. (I really was a massive fan - went to see them several times; hung around our local Cure tribute band like a proper groupie; taught myself the guitar, just to be able to play some of my favourites!)
No, I think it left me cold for the same reason that the people above, loathe them:
An interview with Robert Smith describes it as “one of the darkest albums” they’ve ever made: “an eight-song suite of despair, rage and brooding thoughts,” and Bob himself says:
“I think it’s natural, as you grow older, to feel more and more despairing of what goes on…”
And I’m like, WTF?! No it’s not!
I think that’s maybe how I felt in my 20’—full of despair, rage and brooding thoughts—and that’s probably why The Cure resonated so strongly for me back then (along with the amazing tunes, natch) and why I feel a real sense of fond nostalgia today, when I go back in time and relive those beautifully sad songs.
But he’s 65 now, and surely he could have afforded some therapy along the way? Isn’t it time to move on?!
And then I made it to track seven, which strikes me almost as a cry for help: a moment of self-awareness and honesty about the deepest fear being held, that’s still driving him down this well-worn path, after all these years:
“I think too much of all that’s gone
I lose all my life like this
And all for fear of what I’ll find if I just stop.
I think too much of all to come
I waste all my world like this
And all for fear of what I’ll find if I just stop.”
This is the track that speaks to me, because YES! This is the human’s primal fear: what we’ll find if we stop identifying with the mind’s creations.
We’ve become so inured to the ego-whisperer’s stories that we think they’re who we really are. And so letting go of them is a bit scary—“Better the devil you know,” eh?—or worse, like actual death!
For what will we find, when the story about who we think we are, that we’ve invested so much in shoring up and defending, is no more? When an ego dies?
(Clearly looking especially terrifying when your career to date has been built on that persona, eh Bob? 🤷🏻♂️)
I guess it’s what I’ve committed to helping people do, having seen that really, this is all just a mind creating a bunch of knicker-twisting drama about something that’s not actually that big a deal.
It really isn’t.
People turn over new leaves all the time, and letting go of all that baggage from the past, and all the judgements of our ‘self’ is profoundly liberating.
As a client said to me this very morning, as we explored this together,
“I can’t really explain it, but life just seems easier. I feel better about everything, even though it seems like I haven’t really done anything!”
That’s what happens when you’re freed from the tyranny—and endless toil—of having to keep a Thought System happy.
📦
Giles
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