Review: Robert Smith sounds dire on the Cure’s new ‘Alone’

POP/ROCK

The Cure, “Alone”

“This is the end of every song we sing,” Robert Smith laments in the stately, dire, seven-minute “Alone.” It’s the first preview of “Songs of a Lost World,” the Cure’s first studio album since 2008, which is due Nov. 1. The first half of the track is instrumental, establishing a lugubrious pace with thick, sustained chords punctuated by slamming drums. It sets up Smith to deliver a threnody for just about everything: not just music but love, nature, hope, dreams, even the stars. “Where did it go?” Smith wonders amid the emptiness.

Stevie Nicks, “The Lighthouse”

Nicks has re-emerged, righteous and adamant, with “The Lighthouse,” a post-Dobbs call for action on women’s rights. “You better learn how to fight,” she sings. What starts as a dirge — “All the rights that you had yesterday are taken away” — quickly snowballs into a march, a latter-day sequel to “Stand Back” that insists on standing up instead.

Lady Gaga, “Happy Mistake”

Lady Gaga has always flaunted that she was a theater kid, in love with self-transformation. Then she turned to widescreen naturalism in the redemptive remake of “A Star Is Born.” “Happy Mistake,” from her surprise album “Harlequin,” uses a raw-throated vocal over acoustic guitars, the totem of sincerity, even with the track’s echo effects. She sets out an artifice — “I can try to hide behind the makeup but the show must go on” — but goes on to claim, “I could hold my heart in a safe place.” What’s the pose, what’s the person? In a pop song, it doesn’t matter; listeners find meanings of their own.

Rosalía featuring Ralphie Choo, “Omega”

In this straightforwardly blissful love song, “Omega” Rosalía insists — in a high, breathy voice — that she’s found her best, ultimate partner, her omega; the Spanish pop songwriter Choo returns the affection. Acoustic guitar gives the track a rich, folky foundation, but Rosalía can’t resist an interlude of flamenco handclaps and computer-manipulated vocals before the final reverent affirmation.

Willow featuring Kamasi Washington, “Wanted”

Willow’s ever-expanding album is now titled “Ceremonial Contrafact (Empathogen Deluxe),” with new songs including “Wanted.” Willow sings about being buffeted by contradictory desires in a song with neck-snapping shifts of tempo — hurtling, languorous, swirling, funky — and an arrangement that deploys Washington’s saxophones as both an insistent horn section and a cascading final solo, spurring Willow to keep questioning: “Is this what I wanted?”

Shakira, “Soltera”

Shakira revels in independence in “Soltera” (“Single”). She sings, in Spanish, that she’s at a beachside hotel with a cocktail, and “Nobody is going to tell me how to behave.” The transparent, irresistible groove — concocted with Latin Grammy-winning collaborators including Bizarrap and Edgar Barrera — hints at Afrobeats, cumbia, bachata and Congolese soukous. Shakira may be single, but not alone; at the end, Shakira summons a chorus of fellow “lobas”: she-wolves.

JON PARELES, New York Times

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