Album of deep soul

THE CURE: FIRST STUDIO PRODUCTION IN 16 YEARS A MAGICAL PROSE

- Hein Kaiser

Ok. Lost a bit for words here. Sometimes a band creates an album so wickedly melancholic as it is brilliant, so deeply touching and resonant that all the ills of life and the world end up staccato-ed into verses without a bridge.

The Cure's first studio album in 16 years is magical prose, poetic melody and a living interlude for existentialism.

Not since Disintegration's release in 1989, where frontman Robert Smith faced his reality turning 30, has an album by The Cure been so wildly anticipated.

And, just like Disintegration, it's a landmark album.

From the opening track where Smith sings about loss and sadness, he faces his own mortality.

It's an epic introduction to an album that holds up a mirror, and we may not like what we see. Or it scares us.

He sings: "This is the end of every song that we sing, the fire burned out to ash, and the stars grown dim with tears, cold and afraid, the ghosts of all that we've been. We toast with bitter dregs, to our emptiness"

It's the realisation that getting older is inevitable, and the fear we all hold of the end.

It's a cold shoulder song, but with Smith's trademark embrace, nonetheless.

The second of the eight-track album, And Nothing Is Forever, is an a-typical Cure love song.

If there is such a thing.