“I know that my world is grown old,” Robert Smith says in “And Nothing Is Forever”, one of the many standout tracks on The Cure’s 14th studio album and first in 16 years. Songs of a Lost World deals almost exclusively in death, dying and the relentless march of time; the songs move slowly, and many go on for minutes before Smith opens his mouth. There’s no pop hits, no hooks and—let’s face it—no fun. It’s also some of the band’s most engrossing work, a statement that, like most great Cure songs, can’t be taken lightly.

The glacially paced opener and lead single, “Alone”, is majestic and mournful, with string swells and apocalyptic lyrics about birds falling out of the sky. But mostly it’s about dying alone, the shattered pieces of a regret-filled life and the forgone conclusion that is our mutual demise: “This is the end of every song that we sing.” On “A Fragile Thing”, a plinking piano gives way to a thudding bassline as Smith sings of heartbreak, distance and fait accompli. It might be the closest the album comes to vintage ’80s Cure, but now the 65-year-old Smith’s customarily downbeat lyrics come with the weight of lived wisdom and cruel inevitability. “Warsong” twists the screws with a churning, droning meditation on domestic battles and bitter regret; at a bit over four minutes, it’s also the shortest song on the album.

“Drone:Nodrone” is the catchiest and most upbeat of the bunch—musically speaking, anyway. Smith’s lyrics are no picnic, of course. They’re not a completely hopeless death spiral, but they certainly acknowledge a tumultuous relationship: “The answers that I have are not the answers that you want” and “I can’t anymore/If I ever really could.” The track also features squalling guitar leads from former Tin Machine/David Bowie sideman Reeves Gabrels, who joined The Cure in 2012 but makes his first studio appearance with the band here. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” laments the death of Smith’s brother Richard with the refrain “Something wicked this way comes”, a phrase from Shakespeare popularised by the title of Ray Bradbury’s influential 1962 novel. (The Cure debuted the song in concert in 2022 in Poland, where Richard Smith apparently lived for many years.) Like much of Lost World, it’s a tearjerker.

With all this loss and mortality, Songs of a Lost World recalls Bowie’s 2016 swansong, Blackstar. Finishing an album about death with a sprawling, gorgeous track called “Endsong” isn’t necessarily ominous, but who knows? For what it’s worth, Smith is already promising a follow-up to Songs of a Lost World. Hopefully, it won’t take 16 years.