There’s no denying that Songs Of A Lost World was a monumental latter-day triumph. But let’s be honest for a minute: how many times have you re-listened to it since its release in November 2024? Be honest now and take into account how morbid it was, even by the standards of The Cure. For 50 minutes, Robert Smith told us again and again that one day he was going to die. Also, that one day you are going to die. And that everyone you know is going to die. At least The Flaming Lips delivered the same message while dressed as massive chickens and showering the listener in confetti, glitter, and balloons.
The Cure’s fourteenth studio album exists for those times when you will really need it; as nobody’s reaching for their 4K collectors edition of Michael Haneke’s Amour every Saturday before they head to the pub are they? When I find myself on my deathbed, I doubt I’m going to regret that I could’ve spent more time listening to Robert Smith remind me that, sooner, rather than later, I was going to find myself on my deathbed. I don’t mind if you think of me as someone who’d rather listen to an Oliver Burkeman self-help podcast or ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams, instead of unforgivingly bleak and existentially forensic music, but that’s just the way it is.
For the percentage of people who might already have played Songs Of A Lost World to death, as it were, The Cure have now provided a treble album of remixes. It’s a funny old thing, the rock remix album. By nature they are usually patchy. This includes the small number of them that could claim a degree of cultural significance, such as Nine Inch Nails’ Further Down The Spiral. Naturally, some of the artists drafted in will apply more graft than others; with some in the “less graft” camp happy to settle for whacking a donk in among the stems provided, then settling back to wait for PayPal to ping, before summoning their dealer via Signal.
The shoddiest remix albums are seen as cash-ins, but they’re actually less than this because it’s barely believable that many of them turn a profit; many actually come off more like a desperate gamble. Even in the format’s heyday, during the long CD boom, once all the architects had been paid and the booklets printed off, there’d still be plenty anxiety concerning the (near) completists of both remixers and remixees alike who might realise that they simply didn’t need to hear The Crystal Method and Danny Tenaglia extending the length of album tracks which had been satisfying enough in the first place.
The Cure have prior with 1990’s Mixed Up and its lesser discussed sequel from 2018, Torn Down. The former was condemned by some as a bandwagoning rip-off, received by others as a curiously enjoyable foray back onto the dancefloor after an absence of some years. It has since been reappraised as impressive evidence of the band’s continued quest for relevancy. For Robert Smith at the time, Mixed Up was “the record that drunk Cure fans should listen to, [because] it really makes you feel good, which is unusual for us.”
This time around, most of the contributors are not actively trying to appeal to inebriated listeners to quite the same extent. And you can hear the effort some have made in injecting different kinds of life into the music that accompanies Smith’s recent morbid observations. Paul Oakenfold’s Cinematic Remix of ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ does what it says on the tin. This pounding combo of synths & strings suggests a gothic reboot of the Mission Impossible franchise in which Tom Cruise battles vampires with Jenna Ortega as his trusty new sidekick. (Handily, if shot, both stars are around the same height.) Similarly full-on renditions, equally suitable for the closing credits of a CGI blockbuster, are provided by Daybreakers and Mental Overdrive.
Most of the tracks foreground Smith’s forlorn and minimally manipulated vocal takes, keeping them high in the mix, if not always throughout the whole song. There are notable exceptions, however, such as the Meera version of ‘All I Ever Am’, on which the voice now entertainingly evokes a chipmunk in a K-hole. Four Tet handles the music of ‘Alone’ so delicately, with his signature blissful jittering, that it’s almost a shame when Smith turns up halfway through to remind us once more of The End. The same might be said of Mogwai’s oceanic and echoing treatment for ‘Endsong’. As might be expected of the pedal-board-focused post rock veterans, it emphasises and embellishes the emotionally engulfing nature of The Cure’s sublime guitar effects. That voice does make an appearance, eventually, but those otherworldly textures are celebrated as the pièce de résistance.
JoyCut hint, at first, that they might only include Smith’s wordless croaking. Alas, they cop out by using lots of his verses, so it seems like an opportunity missed for disembodied and deconstructed abstraction. The bolder Craven Faults jettison the vocals of ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye’ to distil its source’s melancholic essence into a nine-minute ambient instrumental. In contrast Shanti Celeste’s February Blues Remix of ‘Alone’ aims, in spite of its subtitle, for clubby William Orbit euphoria and is at its most effective when Smith’s whisper floats in the surroundings like that belonging to a fairy godfather.
Refreshing positivity is also provided by the Cosmodelica Electric Eden Remix of ‘And Nothing Is Forever’, its upbeat feel helping to reiterate that, although it too is about ageing and finality, this is one of Smith’s most defiant love songs. Another at the lighter end of the spectrum is Âme’s ‘A Fragile Thing’. Feasibly influenced by 1983’s ‘The Love Cats’, in the way it singles out the bassline amid an otherwise sparse track to make for a strangely jaunty experience.
Remix collections tend to be a mixed bag. Mixes Of A Lost World is no different. As with Mixed Up, it invites a mixed reception. The Cure are donating their royalties to War Child UK, so its release needn’t be viewed too cynically. Given that it’s a whopping 122 minutes long, you might want to whittle down its 24 songs into a slimmer playlist spotlighting those cuts that work best. If you have the time and the inclination to bother, that is. As Smith is at such pains to hammer home, there is only so much sand in the hourglass.
Mixes Of A Lost World is out today via Fiction, with at least £1 per purchase going to War Child
