The Cure’s grand return is imminent — or, more accurately, it’s happening right now. In a few weeks, the band will release Songs Of A Lost World, their first new album in 16 years. They’ve shared two singles, “Alone” and “A Fragile Thing,” and both of them are awesome. To promote the album, Robert Smith isn’t doing any traditional press interviews. Instead, he had one very long conversation with Matt Everitt, the British radio presenter and former Menswear drummer, and that conversation has a lot of tidbits about Smith’s future plans for the Cure.

Robert Smith’s interview with Matt Everett lasts for an hour and 41 minutes — actual movie-length — and it’s really just one static shot of Smith talking for all that time. Selections from that interview were given to The Times, Uncut, and NME in recent days, and those outlets ran those excerpts as features. The Cure also posted the whole interview on their songsofalost.world website; you can pull up the video by changing the date to the LP’s release date, I XI MMXXIV. Thankfully, some very kind Cure fan has posted the entire interview to YouTube, so you don’t have to do all that if you don’t want to. I’d act quickly, though; these YouTube rips have a way of disappearing.

In that interview, Robert Smith talks about all sorts of things that the Cure have in store. He claims that there’s another cure album, which is “virtually finished” and which will come out after Songs Of A Lost World. Smith also has the beginnings of another Cure album after that one, too. That part of the conversation is in the NME excerpt:

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

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.

He just can’t help himself! Elsewhere, Smith says that the Cure will probably head out on tour again in autumn 2025, which will lead into 50th-anniversary concerts and a documentary in 2028. That’ll be the year that Smith turns 70, and he implies that he’ll be ready to end the Cure after that: “If I make it that far, that really is it.” Here’s an excerpt where he talks about all those plans:

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There’s a whole Reddit thread of highlights from the interview, if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing yourself. And one of the plans that Smith mentions in the interview is already coming into fruition. On the day that the Cure release Songs Of A Lost World, they’ll play the album all the way through at the Troxy in London, and it’ll be livestreamed for free.

The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World : Album Launch Show
Live at Troxy London – 1st November 2024
Ticket info at https://t.co/63L11XJOKB
Free Global Live Stream on The Cure YouTube – More details to follow pic.twitter.com/1Nd8E3bsF6

— The Cure (@thecure) October 11, 2024

Songs Of A Lost World is out 11/1.