Four years since their last release The Cure are back to prove their worth nearly three decades since their debut. Fans that have not blocked out the lackluster previous self-titled effort might remember it as a somewhat shambolic attempt to reinvigorate their sound with a rockier edge. While the level of that album’s horribleness has been slightly exaggerated it’s fair to say it was not what the fans wanted and indeed it never really did seem to rub the band themselves the right way. Overall, it felt a bit artificial.

Enter 4:13 Dream. Originally conceived as a double album, this offering is a much more loose and joyful affair. Well, mostly anyway. Three songs in and Robert Smith is already singing about suicide, but in perspective it’s still pretty bloody cheery. Musically the band has clearly been tracing their own steps and ended up mostly digging around in the late 80’s to early 90’s part of their catalogue. Many of the songs breathe the air which you might expect to inhale in between 1989’s Disintegration and 1992’s Wish with a mixture of lush and bittersweet. If The Cure was an attempt to re-invent the wheel, ‘4:13 Dream’ is the result of a realization that the wheel is perfectly fine, if a bit aged and in need of some new bolts and a tender polishing.

It isn’t all perfect, sadly. Some traces of the shrieky prequel are still present, for example in the unbearable track ‘The Scream’ and a fair few of the songs aren’t so much similar to older Cure songs but slightly blander photocopies of them, like first single ‘The Only One’ which sounds so much like the song ‘High’ it’s downright embarrassing.

Despite its shortcomings 4:13 Dream is a pleasant reminder that The Cure still very much deserve our attention. It never quite reaches the peaks of the band’s best work, except for the head-spinningly amazing opener ‘Underneath The Stars’. On the other hand it never really explores the darkest depths of their worst either and in these dark and uncertain times that’s pretty much all we can hope for.

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