The Cure announce release details of comeback single ‘Alone’

23 September, 2024

Robert Smith of The Cure

The Cure have shared full release details of their comeback single ‘Alone’.

The track, which is taken from their forthcoming album ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, will be released this Thursday (September 26) via Fiction/Polydor. You can pre-save it here.

The single will debut on Mary Anne Hobbs’s BBC Radio 6Music show at 12pm BST with further “details about the album” also being released that day, according to a press release.

The band have also shared the artwork for the single, in a clip which you can view below.

It comes after a snippet of the new comeback single was shared last Friday (September 20).

For those who signed up to the band’s site and joined their Whatsapp community, a message was sent out which read: “Want to hear ‘Alone’?”. It was sent with the option to click ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

Anyone who clicked ‘Yes’ received a 12-second audio clip, alongside a message saying that they could “discover more at songsofalost.world”.

In the preview, the sound seemed to capture the same essence as The Cure’s earlier discography. It fades in, before erupting into an ambient guitar verse and a dramatic drum melody.

From then, those who logged into the site got to see a slow, ghostly riff played, as Smith sings: “This is the end of every song we sing“. Those same lyrics were also sent out in a separate WhatsApp update.

The preview comes after new billboards were spotted in the likes of Rome, Paris and NYC, featuring the album title and an image of a stone with a face in it.

It will mark their first studio album since 2008’s ‘4:13 Dream‘, and has so far seen them teasing fans on social media and sending out postcards confirming the title and release date (November 1). More recently, Robert Smith and co. erected a ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ poster at the Crawley pub – the site where they played their first gig – and suggested that an upcoming show in Blackpool is on the way.

Smith previously spoke to NME backstage at the BandLab NME Awards in 2022, and took the time to exclusively confirm that The Cure’s next album would be titled ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.

He also revealed more about its sister record and his anticipated solo album. “So I’ve been working on two Cure albums, and one of them is finished,” he added.

“Unfortunately, it’s the second one that’s finished. [On the other] I’ve got to do four vocals, and there are 10 songs on each album. We’re mixing next month on April 1, so I’ve got three weeks left.”

Asked about the sound of the upcoming records, Smith revealed: “Well the first Cure album is relentless doom and gloom. It’s the doomiest thing that we’ve ever done. The second one is upbeat, and my [solo] one won’t be out until next year.”

The frontman has long teased the band’s long-awaited “merciless” new record. The same can be said of keyboardist Roger O’Donnell, who previously described it as “the most intense, saddest, most dramatic and most emotional record we’ve ever made.”

The comments about the upcoming LP go back as far as 2019, when Smith spoke to NME about his hopes for the album, saying: “Before I used to write about stuff that I thought I understood. Now I know I understand it. The lyrics I’ve been writing for this album, for me personally, are more true. They’re more honest.

“That’s probably why the album itself is a little bit more doom and gloom. I feel I want to do something that expresses the darker side of what I’ve experienced over the last few years – but in a way that will engage people.”

As well as the upcoming record, the band are set to release two new songs as live recordings. These will come as a double A-side for climate charity ‘Earth Percent’.

Released via Naked Record Club – a record label that releases limited edition records on sustainable vinyl, ‘The Cure – Novembre: Live in France 2022’ is a double A-Side 12” Eco-Vinyl single featuring two live tracks (‘And Nothing Is Forever’ and ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’) that were recorded during the French leg of the band’s ‘Shows Of A Lost World’ tour.

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