The Cure’s Robert Smith on their “two new albums and an hour of noise”

The Cure‘s Robert Smith has spoken to NME about their plans to release new material, with at least one of their three new albums nearing completion. Watch our interview with Smith above.

The band were speaking after picking up the award for Best Festival Headliner supported by CanO Water at the NME Awards 2020. Last summer, Smith exclusively told NME that they were looking to finish their “merciless” new album in 2019 – 11 years after predecessor ‘4:13 Dream’. He revealed that the new songs had been shaped by his “experience of life’s darker side” – before sharing that it had the working title of ‘Live From The Moon‘ and that they in fact had a total of three albums in the works.

So, will we hear the triptych in 2020?

“You’ll be lucky to get one, the way I’m working!” Smith told NME this week. “There are only really two, the third is literally just an hour of noise. I wouldn’t call it an album. The first one will definitely be out. We’re just wrapping it up now, it’s going to be mixed. Until it’s out, no one will believe me. I look forward to it coming out, more than anybody else – trust me.”

Can he at least confirm that one will come soon? “No!” he replied. “I’m too old to commit to idiot things like that. Wait and see!”

Meanwhile, Smith told us how he was honoured with the Best Festival Headliner gong – as it celebrated the end of a chapter for the band after playing 35 festivals across five continents last year.

“It’s great getting an award for playing live,” Smith told NME. “It’s very rare. Probably amongst our fans, that’s how we’re most known. Particularly over the last decade – that’s all we’ve done, really. Maybe that’s why. It’s taken us 10 years to get here.”

He continued: “It’s the end of a 10-year period since the last album, because we’re about to bring out a new one. I wanted to see how many big festivals we could headline around the world. It’s very gratifying. We ended up playing places we’d never been before. We went to the continent of Africa for the first time last year.

“For me, the level that we were at almost throughout the whole year – that’s what was most gratifying. We played each show as if it was going to be our last. In some cases, it could be the last time we play in those countries. There was a certain poignancy to the performances and they were just great.”

• The NME Big Read – Exclusive: Robert Smith on the past, present and future of The Cure

Smith also opened up about being exposed to new talent was proving to be quite the muse as the band gear up to drop new material.

“For the last two or three years, I’ve been inspired by a younger generation of artists,” said Smith. “Maybe I could have just settled back and not bothered. Because of the Meltdown Festival that I curated a couple of years ago, it made me go out there again. I realised I’d just been letting it all pass me by.

“Seeing all these people perform, you realise ‘Fuck! There are some fantastic people’ – it’s a great time to go see live music.”