The Cure

"I can't find myself," Robert Smith intones to open "Lost," the ominous first cut on the Cure's first album in four years. The '80s mope-pop icon spends the rest of the album searching, and we like what he found. Producer Ross Robinson, known for his work with nü-metalloids like Korn and Limp Bizkit, convinces Smith to really uncork his demons: He's desperately in love one moment (the giddy pop wonder "Before Three"), desperately out of it the next (the synth-charged breakup classic "The End of the World"). "Us and Them" finds Smith hollering, "I don't want you anywhere near me/Get your fucking world out of my head!" amid atmospheric guitar menace and a throbbing bottom end. Although his confessional tone and his penchant for melodramatic hooks have made him a spiritual godfather to a wide swath of younger bands (Deftones, Bright Eyes, Interpol), you might think there'd be something sad about seeing Smith—slightly fatter and splotchier, still dressed all in black—harvesting his personal misery for moody pop songs more than two decades after the Cure's breakthrough. There's not.