The Cure returned in 2024 with Songs of a Lost World, which marked their first new album in 16 years. But in a recent interview on John Kennedy’s Radio X show, frontman Robert Smith revealed that the band’s follow-up LP will arrive “hopefully before next summer.”
Smith told Kennedy that he’s been hard at work finishing the new album, which features a pair of songs that were intended for Songs of a Lost World but didn’t make the cut. “In 2019 we recorded 24 songs for what was going to be a double album, and those eight have come out,” Smith said, later elaborating that the new album will be “probably 10 songs.”
He continued: “The companion piece to Songs Of A Lost World, which will be out hopefully before next summer, is what I’m currently finishing. I just need to mix it. It’s not as dark in some ways, although it actually has probably the saddest song of all of them on it. It has a couple of songs that we were playing live which didn’t make it onto Songs Of A Lost World and it has some completely new stuff that no one’s ever heard. But it’s probably more varied, I think.”
Regarding the tracks that will land on their new album, Smith teased “It Can Never Be the Same,” a cut first debuted in 2016 that Smith described as a “song of grief… a very, very old song which we’ve been playing for a long, long time.” He also named “A Boy I Never Knew,” which was written for The Cure’s 2004 self-titled effort. “I think that would probably make it on [the new album],” Smith said, “That’s a sad song, but in a completely different way. That’s me singing about a boy that died a million years ago. About the death of humanity before it started, I think… or something.”
Believe it or not, Smith also teased a third album in the works for The Cure. “Having finished this one (Songs of a Lost World), the second one is virtually finished as well,” he said. “The third one is a bit more difficult because, well if we get that far… Talking about the third album, you see what I mean? I just can’t help myself.” It’s not the first time he’s referenced a third new Cure album, telling Absolute Radio’s Danielle Perry last year that while the follow-up to Songs of a Lost World is more of a “companion piece” to the album, the third record is “completely different.” “It’s really kind of random stuff, like late-night studio stuff,” Smith said, “But some of it is really good actually, it’s just very very different.”
Essentially, Robert Smith and The Cure have found themselves in another prolific period late in their career, and hopefully Smith’s summer benchmark ends up being real. For now, revisit Songs of a Lost World, which landed on our list of the 50 best albums of 2024.