Is this the last ever Cure album? Will Robert now toddle off into a Sussex seaside sunset armed with a solo album and an internet handbook, free at last from the corporate demands of the ever amalgamating giant record companie? If so, is 'Bloodflowers' a fitting testament to what at the end of the day is a great band with great songs and their own unmistakable sound?
'Out Of This World' is a delicate opener, drum brushes, acoustic guitar, melodic, wistful and, yes nostalgic, "I wonder when we look back on all of this..." with the requisite delicate hint of menace spinning away on an echo machine in the background. And just as you begin to fear for Robert's soul and the band's future, "We always have to go back to real lives, but real lives are the reason why we wanted another life", keyboard player Roger O'Donnell throws in the sort of comedy piano solo that Madness in their prime would have been proud of.
'Where The Birds Always Sing' could be a critique of the record industry these past twenty years. A tale of the battle between survival and tragic death, of justice and injustice, of chart topping boy bands and niche rock bands who have to ask permission to put their own music on their own website homepage - maybe.
'The Last Day Of Summer' boasts a beautifully piano-driven instrumental intro which Robert eventually dresses with another lyrical look backward over his shoulder. 'There Is No If…is a surprise - a gorgeous, funny, love song that Robbie Williams would make a million out of. Robert's lover sneezes, coughs and yawns all over his declarations which end with what amounts to a suicide pact - just in case you were getting worried.
But enough of the soft stuff, back to the career metaphor of '39'. "The fire's out and there's nothing left to burn…I've run out of words" sings Robert as the band finally breaks loose and rocks out across the tale, presumably, of a man - Robert Smith - approaching 40, the mid point of his life. He has no great insight for us, no great truth, just a declaration of running on empty. He's 40 now, of course, but the day he wrote '39' must have been as particularly bad one. It certainly sounds like a 'goodbye' .
If it was, then the closing 'Bloodflowers' itself is a more fitting finale - at least at the outset. Defiant, optimistic, forward looking; "this wave will never break…flowers will never fade". Of course Robert attributes this world view to somebody else, before contradicting every single positive point he's just sung, this time as himself; "the time always comes to slip away…flowers will always die."
Plain speaking or another great Smith/Cure hoax? With a world tour and the festival season stretching ahead of the Cure, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime 'Bloodflowers' stands as a glorious, if contradictory, body of work. It won't win new converts but lapsed Cure fans will find it a thrilling and rewarding hour. Just have those hankies ready by the end.
