Written by Robert Smith originally intended that The Cure‘s 11th album, 2000’s Bloodflowers, would be his group’s final studio collection. Smith turned 40 during the making of the record, and considered this an appropriate point at which to bring the curtain down on his band, and try something new, specifically a solo record. For Smith, Bloodflowers represented the completion of a Cure ‘trilogy’, following on from 1982’s Pornography, and 1989’s Disintegration, and its release would see his band exiting stage left on a high note.
Happily, for fans of Smith’s unique, truly original and highly influential band, there would be much more to come from The Cure. Interviewed in 2002, Smith revealed that he thought that his group had “turned into a very good band” since the millennium, and admitted, “I never thought that I’d make an album with The Cure that was as good as Bloodflowers.“
The following year, Smith renewed his commitment to the band by signing a three-album deal in America with ARTISTdirect Records imprint, I AM, the label launched by producer Ross Robinson. Though Robinson is best known for his work with game-changing rock and metal bands – Korn, Sepultura, Slipknot and At The Drive-In among them – the Texan producer revealed that The Cure had been his “favorite band for years and years”. And as an affirmation of his excitement about the signing, he pledged to co-produce the band’s next record with Smith.
Such was Smith’s enthusiasm for what would become his band’s twelfth album, that he demoed no fewer than 37 songs for potential inclusion, which the group and their new producer collectively whittled down to 20 to record at London’s legendary Olympia studios, which had previously hosted The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Led Zeppelin among many others.
“We convinced [Robinson] that the doom and gloom of London is more conducive to making our music than sunny California,” Smith said, somewhat mischievously.
“I started writing really heavy songs, because, when you’re working with Ross, he’s bound to want dark and moody,” The Cure’s frontman told Rolling Stone. “What became very apparent is that he liked all kinds of things we did. He’s really into the melodic side of the band and the pop side of the band.”
The group – completed at the time by guitarist Perry Bamonte, bassist Simon Gallup, keyboard player Roger O’Donnell, and drummer Jason Cooper – commended recording at Olympia in late 2003. It didn’t take long for their new producer’s famously ‘idiosyncratic’ and onfrontrational working methods to surface.
“On the first day we were in the studio, we set up and started playing a song,” Smith told Spin in 2004. “He let us play through it for an hour or so, and then he came out and he just started kicking things over, and he went absolutely mental. He’s talking like, ‘You’re the Cure, what the fuck are you doing?’
“The band as a band is never usually confronted, because it’s usually just me saying to them, This is the last album, try to pull something out. And suddenly we had this bloke running around, kicking thing over, going, ‘For fuck’s sake, don’t any of you realize?’ And it was so incredible having something like that. I loved it. I was like almost crying with happiness. And I knew at that moment that it was going to work.”
Robinson asked that the band record one song per day. And, as he had previously done with the likes of Korn, Slipknot and Machine Head, one of his stipulations was that, prior to recording, Smith was required to tell his bandmates what each song was about.
“I thought, fucking hell, this is outrageous that I’m being asked to explain,” Smith admitted to The Guardian. “And then I thought, no, I’m going to go along with this, the whole point of it is that it’s supposed to be a different experience.”
The English musicians found Robinson’s methods unsettling and uncomfortable. Tantrums and tears were not uncommon.
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“The air was thick,” the producer told Tape Op, “because what he sings about [aren’t] always the happiest things in the world — so people had to feel it when they recorded their drums and their parts. English people don’t really want to feel that much.”
“We’d be facing the control booth so we could see Ross and we would figure out the technical stuff,” Smith told Rolling Stone. “He put us in a very confined space, right on top of each other, with eye-to-eye contact. At night, we’d face the other way, light the candles and suddenly it became very real. I would stand up and away we would go.
“We’d say, ‘That’s a good take’, and he’d come in and go, ‘That’s the worst fucking thing that I’ve ever heard. What are you all thinking about?’ he told Spin. “I was singing at him, and he was like, ‘Make me cry.’ I’ve never had that before.”
Looking back on his experience working with The Cure, Robinson acknowledged that he may have made some mistakes with his approach.
“I wanted The Cure to be in the ’70s or 1982’s Pornography, and Robert Smith’s in his mid-to-late 40s, and then there’s me pushing this sub-personality on him, like [makes loud roaring sound] not letting anything go by,” he told Metal Hammer in 2022. “I feel like he’s saying, ‘Too loud’ on that record.”
“I want you to be you today, and not try to repeat some fantasy of the past that I have in my frickin’ head, like, This is what I crave, I know these guys better than they do. No, I don’t, I don’t know anything. But I do deeply, deeply know to absolutely respect the artist”
When it came to selecting the songs that would make the cut for thej record, Robinson and Smith had very differing opinions. But in this process Smith made it 100 per cent clear that he was the boss.
“Three of the five being left off are the most depressing songs we’ve ever done,” the bandleader told MOJO magazine in 2004. “Ross Robinson is beside himself with anguish that I’ve left them off the album. The running order that Ross came up with was an eight-song album of all the big, dark, dismal songs. Then I put together my running order and we played them back-to-back, and I just preferred mine. The fact is, I make the decisions.”
Featuring artwork designed by Smith’s nephews and nieces,The Cure was released on June 25, 2004. “Anyone who doesn’t like this just doesn’t like the Cure,” the singer bullishly told told the world two weeks before its emergence.
“Everything we’d done before was going to culminate on this record,” he told Rolling Stone. “That was the mind set that we had when we were in the studio. And I would say that more passion went into the making of this record than all the others combined.”
The record was a critical and commercial success, peaking at number 7 in America, and number 8 in the UK. But, in classic Robert Smith style, the story would have a somewhat unhappy ending.
“The Cure album is probably my least favourite album that we’ve made,” he told BBC 6Music’s Matt Everitt in 2024. “I don’t like some of it, it’s the only album that I don’t think works.”
Nevertheless, for a new generation, the world’s gloomiest band were back in business.
