As the release of The Cure’s 14th album and first in 16 years, Songs of a Lost World, approaches, Robert Smith has given a number of interviews. Among the latest is an interview with Matt Everitt, available exclusively on their Songs of a Lost World website (unlocked by selecting the release date of their forthcoming album.)

In the hour-and-a-half conversation, Smith reveals that they had recorded new songs around seven years ago for a new album in honor of the 40th anniversary of the band, but later got scrapped out:

“Probably in 2016-2017, I was preparing for the 40th anniversary of the band, and I thought a new album would be the way to do that. And life, again, kind of just crashed out and it never got done. As things turned out, it was probably good that I didn’t do them, ‘cause the songs that we were going to record in 2017 are not the songs we ended up recording in 2019.”

He then elaborates on the context and idea surrounding this unrealized album:

“I felt that we should be summing up. I thought, The 40th anniversary of the band happens in 2018, and the 40th anniversary of the first album [Three Imaginary Boys] was in 2019, so we’ll do something that sums up what the band is and where we got to. It was a grand plan – and grand plans generally don’t work very well, in my experience!"

"It wasn’t really being done for the right reasons. It was kind of a bit ‘triumphal’, I suppose, looking back. The tone of it was wrong. As it turned out, what happened in 2018 was a great way to mark the anniversary of the band, and allowed me the time to actually think of ‘Why would we make a new album?’"

"What happened in 2019 was much more natural and everything evolved out of that. There was no longer this idea that we were ‘celebrating’ something or marking something. It was becoming something much more artistic, actually honest, rather than something part of this whole idea of, ‘Here’s The Cure after 40 years, be amazed!’”

He’s subsequently asked about the timeframe of these songs, in case there's any material from before 2019, to which Smith clarifies:

“They’re really old. [For] the oldest song on this album, the demo was done in 2010. They stretched all the way through. The bulk of them, I would say, five of them, probably, have been written since 2017. But three of them: once 2010, once 2011, another was 2013 or 2014. There were so many songs to choose from."

He hints that more album-worthy material had been recorded:

“This is jumping about, but we recorded 25 or 26 songs, I think, in 2019. We recorded three albums in 2019; that’s always been the problem. ‘Cause I’ve been trying to get three albums completed. ‘Cause my idea was that after waiting this long, ‘Let’s just throw out Cure albums every few months!’ Everything with hindsight, you think, ‘Really? I could have done that a lot better’."

Smith then assures “It will work out this time. Having finished this one, the second one is virtually finished as well. The third one is a bit more difficult because, well if we get that far… Talking about the third album, you see what I mean? I just can’t help myself.”

Listen to the rest of the Conversation between Robert Smith and Matt Everitt on The Cure website.

The Cure are set to play an Album Launch Show at Troxy London on 1 November which will also be livestreamed on The Cure's Youtube channel. You can get tickets here.