“Alone” is the first single and opening track of “Songs of a Lost World” — the Cure’s first studio album since 2008’s “4:13 Dream” — which will be released on Nov. 1.
The Cure has been found again.
Robert Smith and his band of not-so-merry men are back in their inimitable mope mode with “Alone,” their first new song in 16 years, which was released on Thursday.
And even after such a long wait, the single takes its sweet — or make that, sullen — time to unfold over nearly seven minutes.
In fact, as the group’s absorbing atmospherics — shades of their 1989 classic LP “Disintegration” — set the melancholy mood, it takes three minutes and 22 seconds before Smith even sings a single word.
But finally, he comes in with his tortured croon: “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.”
Inspired by Ernest Dowson’s poem “Dregs,” “Alone” is an ode “to all the love falling out of our lives,” tailor-made for your doldrums after your next breakup.
