The Cure's 40th anniversary concert film will screen this Thursday, July 11th at participating theaters worldwide. In advance of the screening, NME published a new interview with the legendary Robert Smith. As always, Smith provided many entertaining nuggets of information in the feature.
The bad news: Smith revealed the 40th anniversary documentary on The Cure that was to feature previously unseen archival footage and narration by Smith that he had hoped to create with director Tim Pope is on the back burner. From the article:
"After they found that the format didn’t hold together, they decided to just focus on the London gig. The original idea has not been totally shelved, but won’t be revisited just yet."
Smith also gave an update on The Cure's still unreleased 14th studio album that he hopes will be released in 2019:
"...it's changing. It's a work in progress."
"We did about 17 songs and almost all of them were really downbeat and heavy. There were a handful of others, and I really shouldn’t say this because you’ll go ‘oh no’, but in my head I wanted to do two albums – one after another. One was gonna be upbeat and the other downbeat, but the upbeat one I’m not so sure about now."
"Although the concept of what it’s going to be hasn’t really changed, I may have to change some bits of it. It’s kind of pushed me back a little bit because I thought I’d be in the mixing stage by the time we’d finished the festivals, but in fact we’re going to go back and re-record about three or four songs around the time we go and play Glasgow in August. I feel intent on it being a 2019 release and would be extremely bitter if it isn’t. At some point I will have to say ‘this is it’, otherwise we’ll just keep recording like we have done in the past. It never gets any better. We’re due one more session then we’re done."
Probably not a good idea to bet the house on a new Cure record in 2019, but you never know. As they say, stay tuned.
Read the full interview with Robert Smith here.
The Cure return to North America in August for the Pasadena Daydream Festival and again in October to headline both weekends at Austin City Limits. Details on those shows are posted here.
Don't miss The Cure Anniversary 1979 - 2018 Live In Hyde Park London on the big screen on July 11th. Head here for a list of screenings/participating theaters.
Published July 7th, 2019
