The Cure‘s ‘Songs Of A Lost World‘ has been outselling the rest of the current UK top 10 combined in its opening weekend of release.
Robert Smith and co. released their 14th studio album last Friday (November 1), during a week which saw them play two shows at the iconic BBC Radio Theatre before performing the new record in full at London’s The Troxy on the day of its release.
According to Music Week, ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ has currently racked up 40,918 sales, outselling the rest of the top 10 albums combined. “36,970 units account for the record’s physical release, whilst downloads account for 2,838 and streams make up 1,110 sales,” the outlet reported.
The band’s new album – which also marked The Cure’s first release of original material in 16 years – is also on its way being their first record to land the Number One spot on the charts since their 1992 LP ‘Wish’.
In a five-star review of ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, NME concluded: “Merciless? Yes, but there’s always enough heart in the darkness and opulence in the sound to hold you and place these songs alongside The Cure’s finest. The frontman suggested that another two records may be arriving at some point, but ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.”
The group’s show at The Troxy looks likely to be The Cure’s final show before they tour in autumn 2025. This comes after Smith revealed that the band have another new album that’s “virtually finished” – with a third new record also on the way, and that he’s aiming to complete one of the LPs before hitting the road again in 2025.
“We’ll start up again next year,” said Smith. “Seriously, I have to finish the second album. We were going to play festivals next year, but then I decided that we weren’t going to play anything next summer. The next time we go out on stage will be autumn next year.
“But then we’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the next anniversary – the 2028 anniversary! It’s looming on the horizon. The 2018 one, I started to think about in late 2016, thinking, ‘I’ve got a year and a half, it’s easy!’ And yet I still didn’t manage to get there in time. Now, I’m starting to think, ‘2028, I must get things in order’; so [that’s] the documentary film and things like that.”
In other news, Smith recently revealed that his wife Mary Poole Smith helped him finalise the tracklisting for ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.
Speaking to BBC Radio 6 Music’s Huw Stephens, Smith opened up about how his wife helped him to put the record together and shared: “I was finishing the doom and gloom ones… and [Mary] said no, no, no your best albums are the ones that just have a couple of… more upbeat tracks. She was right. I wanted to finish everything, because I thought that’s only fair to all the songs, like they’re all little children – I don’t want to pick favourites.”