Robert Smith posing

The Cure “A Fragile Thing” review: Familiar elements meet modern reinvention

3 mins read

The Cure have delivered a modern classic with their latest single A Fragile Thing. Released only two weeks after their first new single in sixteen years, A Fragile Thing pushes the bands modern sound whilst paying respect to older elements that made them so famous.

Being the second single off of their upcoming album Songs Of A Lost World, A Fragile Thing had a lot to live up to. Thankfully, the single lives up to expectation and only strengthens the hype surrounding the new album.

In the past few years The Cure have played A Fragile Thing a couple of times live. It’s not surprising for fans of the goth legends that this is one of the singles they put forward since it’s a fantastic bass heavy goth anthem.

The lyrics tells the story of a relationship that’s on the brink, a love that’s stretched to a breaking point, the title directly pointing out how “Fragile” the couples love truly is. It’s an emotional listen with the lyrics and sound drawn from a dark place.

During production of the album back in 2019, vocalist Robert Smith was interviewed by NME about the upcoming album, during the interview he discussed how he recently lost his Father, Mother and Brother, “obviously it had an effect on me. It’s not relentlessly doom and gloom. It has soundscapes on it, like ‘Disintegration’, I suppose. I was trying to create a big palette, a big wash of sound.”

Similarly to the previously released Alone, the band take their time buidling up the soundscape of A Fragile Thing. The song starts with a piano melody that plays throughout the entire song and repeated high hat hits on the drums. the song starts to open up as bassist Simon Gallup plays a heavy riff that creates the moody tone of A Fragile Thing.

Smith starts singing around the one minute mark, his mellow vocal delivery accompanied with the rest of the instrumentation creates a dream like sound that’s both hauntingly beautiful and harshly emotional. Just as the song is coming to a close the chorus plays one more with Smith ending on the line “There’s nothing you can do to the change the end”. This line sounds like the acknowledgement that death is a sure fact, but there’s comfort in knowing that.

Songs Of A Lost World releases November 1.

Stream A Fragile Thing here.

Featured image credit: Sam Rockman

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