Robert Smith will join Tim Burgess for a special run-through of The Cure‘s acclaimed ‘Songs Of A Lost World‘ on an upcoming edition of Tims Listening Party, NME can exclusively reveal.
Becoming a favourite among music fans on social media during lockdown as Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties, the format of The Charlatans frontman talking through new and classic albums with the artists behind them found a new home as a podcast and show on Absolute Radio last year.
Now, it has been confirmed that Smith has recorded a special version of the show that will be broadcast from 10pm this weekend on Sunday December 8 on Absolute Radio before becoming available on the Rayo app shortly after and being made into a podcast early in the new year.
“I’m looking forward very much to my second Listening Party,” Smith told NME, “running through ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ with Tim – this time together in a ‘real life space’ – should be good?”
This comes after Smith hosted a run-through of Tim’s Twitter Listening Party for their classic album ‘Wish’ back in November 2022, done from the dressing room after The Cure played the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. It became the third most replayed Listening Party with over 40,000 so far (with Iron Maiden occupying the top two places). Revisit the ‘Wish’ playback here.
Since Burgess took it to Absolute Radio, The Listening Party has won Gold as best newcomer at The Arias, The Radio Academy earlier this year. The show has featured the likes of U2, Texas, The Kinks, Fall Out Boy, The Libertines and more.
Over the weekend, The Cure released the new ‘A Fragile Thing’ EP featuring a live version and a Robert Smith remix, before announcing a new live album of their special London launch gig.
The mammoth Troxy show saw the band play ‘Songs Of A Lost In World’ in full before running through a packed set of fan favourites and greatest hits, and looks set to be The Cure’s final show before they tour in autumn 2025.
Smith also revealed that the band have another new album that’s “virtually finished” – with a third new record also on the way, and that he’s aiming to complete one of the LPs before hitting the road again in 2025.
“We’ll start up again next year,” said Smith. “Seriously, I have to finish the second album. We were going to play festivals next year, but then I decided that we weren’t going to play anything next summer. The next time we go out on stage will be autumn next year.
“But then we’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the next anniversary – the 2028 anniversary! It’s looming on the horizon. The 2018 one, I started to think about in late 2016, thinking, ‘I’ve got a year and a half, it’s easy!’ And yet I still didn’t manage to get there in time. Now, I’m starting to think, ‘2028, I must get things in order’; so [that’s] the documentary film and things like that.”
‘Songs Of A Lost World’ saw The Cure bag their first Number One album in the UK in 32 years, with NME awarding it five stars – concluding: : “Merciless? Yes, but there’s always enough heart in the darkness and opulence in the sound to hold you and place these songs alongside The Cure’s finest. The frontman suggested that another two records may be arriving at some point, but ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.”
