The Cure’s return to the European festival circuit has already brought a new live lineup, a run of deep-cut setlists, and Robert Smith’s latest cross-generational collision with Olivia Rodrigo. It also has brought the clearest update yet on the next Cure album — and the one after that.
In a new BBC Radio 6 Music interview tied to the band’s Primavera Sound appearance, Smith said The Cure’s follow-up to 2024’s Songs Of A Lost World is complete and nearing delivery to Universal. “We did record three albums’ worth of songs,” Smith said, adding that “the second one’s done.”
That album, however, is not the brighter Cure record. Smith described the immediate follow-up as “more dismal than Songs Of A Lost World,” quickly catching himself over the severity of the word, and said the record is emotionally connected to the last album while coming at the material from “a different perspective.”
The third album is another matter. Smith said that record is “really, really upbeat” and “really poppy,” though he framed the phrase in Cure terms: “my idea of Cure pop.” He also joked that it is “probably 20 BPM slower” than anything Olivia Rodrigo does.
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Smith had already pointed toward this two-album path late last year. In a December 2024 interview with Absolute Radio’s Danielle Perry, he said another Cure album was “pretty much ready to go,” calling it a companion piece to Songs Of A Lost World. He also described a third record as “completely different,” made from “late-night studio stuff,” some of it “really, really good” but “very, very different.”
The update arrives as The Cure have returned to the stage with Eden Gallup in the live lineup. Eden, son of longtime bassist Simon Gallup, joined Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Jason Cooper, Roger O’Donnell, and Reeves Gabrels at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, taking up the space left by the late Perry Bamonte, the band’s guitarist and keyboardist, who died in December at 65.
There is a sharp Cure symmetry in that transition. Bamonte first entered The Cure’s orbit as a roadie and Robert Smith’s guitar tech in 1984, became a full-time member in 1990, and later rejoined the band in 2022 for the Shows Of A Lost World tour. He played guitar, six-string bass, and keyboards across Wish, Wild Mood Swings, Bloodflowers, Acoustic Hits, and 2004’s The Cure. Eden’s own route into the band also began from inside the band’s pathway from roadie to band member. He had already stepped in dramatically at Fuji Rock Festival in Japan in 2019 (and at Austin City Limits that same year), filling in on bass when Simon Gallup was unable to travel because of a serious personal situation. Smith said at the time that Eden looked after Simon’s bass tuning, had known The Cure his whole life, and stepped into the show after a quick rehearsal.
Once again, the current festival sets have also treated The Cure’s catalog as something more alive than a fixed repertoire of songs. At Primavera, the band played a 29-song set heavy on classics but light on new-album material, reviving “2 Late” and “Wrong Number” for the first time since 2019, “alt.end” for the first time since 2018, and “Mint Car” for the first time since 2016. “Burn” also returned with Smith breaking out the double flute.
Two nights later at North Festival in Porto, Portugal, the rarities continued. The Cure brought back “Treasure” from Wild Mood Swings for the first time since 2013 and opened the first encore with “In Your House,” played live for the first time since 2011. That encore became a compact Seventeen Seconds suite, with “In Your House,” “M,” “Play For Today,” and “A Forest” played back to back.
And then there is Olivia Rodrigo. At Primavera, Rodrigo brought Smith out during her surprise set to debut “What’s Wrong With Me,” a new duet and, as Rodrigo told the crowd, the first song she has ever done with a featured artist. “I can’t believe that this song exists with the person it exists with,” she said from the stage.
That appearance followed their Glastonbury 2025 collaboration, when Rodrigo introduced Smith as a personal hero and brought him out for “Friday I’m In Love” and “Just Like Heaven.” Those performances were later released as a BBC recording, with the artists’ proceeds from the Cure covers benefiting Doctors Without Borders.
For a band that once made fans wait 16 years between studio albums, The Cure suddenly have a great deal in motion. Smith claims one finished album is on deck, with another, more upbeat one waiting behind it; Eden Gallup has stepped into the live band’s latest configuration; and the festival setlists are already reaching beyond the obvious. And while the endsong of their 2024 Grammy award-winning album Songs Of A Lost World may have sounded final, The Cure are acting as if several new chapters of the band’s nearly 50-year history are about to be written.
The Cure’s summer run continues this week, with the band moving from the first wave of Iberian festival appearances into a long stretch of European dates that runs through the end of August. The remaining itinerary includes festival stops at Nova Rock, Firenze Rocks, Pinkpop, Isle of Wight, Roskilde, Open’er, Rock Werchter, Pohoda, Electric Castle, Paléo, Øya, Way Out West, and Rock en Seine, along with headline dates in Cardiff, Dublin, Belfast, Berlin, Nîmes, Vilnius, Tallinn, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Bordeaux.
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