When I first listened to this album, I was forced to ask myself how many breakups that The Cure has gone through. Virtually every album that the band has made since 1989's landmark "Disintegration" has been hailed as the final chapter of the Cure, none moreso than 2000's "Bloodflowers", and the Greatest Hits compilation that followed it. "The Cure" is exceptional, in this regard then, that it doesn't have the air of resignation and finality that a lot of their more recent albums have had.

Robert Smith has commented that originally he was planning to make a very dense, very intense record with none of the light-hearted pop numbers that have given him most of his commercial success. However, he later changed his minds and decided to include a mixture of different song types in order to provide a bit of variety. This is a gamble that has partially paid off, you'd be hard-pressed to state that "The Cure" isn't very eclectic and varied in its tone. Unfortunately, this also means that it doesn't have the focus that we all know the band is capable of having.

The first two tracks on the album though promise great things. Lost sounds desperate and frantic, with Smith rambling the lines as if he's just seen the most terrifying thing in his life. Apart fro the glossy production, this song could easily fit on "Pornography" or "The Top". Labyrinth is a bit more structured, with vaguely eastern guitar noises in the background, and Smith chanting the same lines over and over again, mantra style. These two songs are amongst the best on the album, combining the dark seductive quality of early Cure work with twenty-first century production and style.

It's after these two songs that things take an abrupt left-turn though. The next tracks, Before Three and The End of the World are both disappointing exercises in generic alternative rock. I'm not quite sure quite why Smith decided to include them, but, here they are. Before Three is too bland for words, and The End of the World is like a watered down version of Mint Car, a single that wasn't particularly impressive the first time around.

Luckily, on later tracks, things improve again. Anniversary is another song that reminds me of vintage Cure, with it's ethereal keyboard base and softly echoing instrumentation and semi-mumbled vocals. Us or Them is a clumsy song about current affairs that doesn't do much, but it's followed up by Alt.End, which is a decent track. (I Don't Know What's Going) On is a throwaway that contains that hated "do-do-do-do-DO-DO-DO" at the start, something which is rapidly becoming an obnoxious cliché when you hear it from Smith.

The final third of the album is a lot more consistent than the other parts, with two relatively light numbers (Taking Off and Never which segue into the sprawling closing track The Promise, which ends the album in epic style.

One thing that's slightly disappointing is the swearing evident in a couple of the songs. While I generally don't mind profanity if it helps to set the mood or the tone, the vulgarity here seems out-of-place and unnecessary. This might be somewhat related to the fact that this album was recorded very quickly, which means that the band (who all share songwriting credits), might not have had time to come up with more eloquent ways to say things. Still, I wish that the casual use of the f-word in Before Three and Us or Them (two of the weakest songs here, perhaps coincidentally), wasn't there.

It's hard to compare this album to anything except The Cure's back catalogue, since it seems to draw inspiration from all over the significant body of work that the band has put together over the past two decades. It's definitely not the best work that they've ever put out, but neither is it scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. This is a good album, but not an accomplished or consistent one.