Robert Smith says The Cure have recorded two new albums

Robert Smith and Chvrches — Robert Smith and (inset) Chvrches (Image credit: STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images | Chvrches: Sebastian Mlynarski & Kevin J Thomson)

Robert Smith has revealed that two new albums by The Cure have been recorded. Smith made the remarks during an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, where he was interviewed alongside Chvrches about their new collaboration, How Not To Drown, which was released yesterday.

"Probably in about six weeks time I'll be able to say when everything's coming out and what we're doing next year and everything," said Smith. "So we were doing two albums and one of them's very, very doom and gloom and the other one isn't. And they're both very close to being done. I just have to decide who's going to mix them. That's really all I've got left to do."

In the interview, Chvrches reveal how the collaboration with Smith came about. "It was a song that we had already been writing for the record," said singer Lauren Mayberry, "and then our manager had been technically sniffing about trying to see if maybe The Cure were going to tour again and maybe we could try and get a support slot or something.

"So he was like, "I wonder if somebody could put me in touch? How this would happen? How would we ask for this?" And then he got in touch with Robert and the conversations kind of started from there."

How Not To Drown is from Chvrches' upcoming fourth studio album Screen Violence, which set for release on August 27 via Emi (UK)/Glassnote (US). The song explores multi-instrumentalist and singer Martin Doherty’s relationship with mental health, which follows a time in his life where he was dealing with “crippling depression and anxiety”, and ready to give up on music.

The Cure haven't released a studio album since 2008's 4:13 Dream. In August 2019, Smith revealed that the band hoped to finish recording an album that year, and described the sound as “not relentlessly doom and gloom. It has soundscapes on it, like Disintegration."

The previous December, Smith promised, "we’re going in about six weeks time to finish off what will be our first album for more than a decade."

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.