It would be unfair to compare the Cure with the crop of cool Eighties acts now making comebacks. It’s not just that the band have never been away — their last studio album was the reasonably well-received Bloodflowers (2000) — it’s that they have never really slotted into a scene.

It’s true the Cure were once Gods of the Goth movement (no matter how much the singer Robert Smith tries to deny it now), but at the same time they were paving the way for alternative rock. At the peak of their commercial success the Cure played synth-pop (Love Cats, Let’s Go to Bed), they have frequently strayed into psychedelic-rock territory, and they will always boast a singer too wilfully introspective to join any kind of club.

If the Cure’s 13th studio album feels like a band on a revival trip, it’s their own fault. The bulk of their Nineties output wasn’t up to much and their biggest sellers of late have been a couple of best-of albums and a collection of B-sides and rarities, released earlier this year.

Throw in their recent appearances on US festival bills — the favourite place for Eighties bands to wring a few more dollars out of their back catalogue — and it’s hard to believe that the Cure are doing much more than shuffling slowly towards career closure.

Hard to believe, that is, until halfway through Lost, the new album’s opening track. It starts with Smith howling the line “I can’t find myself” over and over, to a strummed, slightly off-key electric guitar, then builds into a chaotic, hypnotic, electro-rock song. Smith’s vocals sound better than they have for a decade — he still sings as if he has the weight of the world on his shoulders, but no longer as though he’s suicidal about it.

In part, you can thank the producer Ross Robinson, a man more used to working with US bands Korn and Limp Bizkit. Smith’s crystal-clear vocals sit on top of a rhythmic bass line, chiming guitars and a thumping drum beat and never sink into a sludgy mix, often the Cure’s problem in the past. By the time Lost ends in a blaze of feedback, you’ll be tapping your toes.

Surprisingly, the Cure manage to keep the quality up throughout the entire album. Labyrinth has a U2-style stadium feel with a dash of Jane’s Addiction, the buzzy guitar-backed Before Three has a dreamy pop hook and the happiest lyrics you’re likely to hear from Smith, and there are handclaps and chirpy guitars on the effects-laden alt rock end. Smith can still get gloomy, mostly about women he wishes he had (Truth, Goodness and Beauty), or had and lost (the techno beats-backed Anniversary), but for once he’s not bringing everyone else down with him.

Where Robinson really makes his mark is on Us or Them, the album’s toughest track. Smith screams about terror and death over crashing guitars and subtle strings. It still sounds like the Cure, but it could have been made by a band half their age. That may leave old Cure fans cold — they have wallowed with Smith in his misery for 25 years and no doubt don’t want to stop now.

For the band, however, it could mean a new lease of life. Already the radio-friendly first single The End of the World is persuading a younger generation that the Cure may be worth a listen. (Smith’s appearance in South Park had already laid the groundwork.) Whether they are prepared to swap the glamour of the Strokes for a fortysomething man with bird’s-nest hair, smudged lippy and too much eyeliner remains to be seen. Whether Smith will continue — he threatens to retire after almost every album and hardly needs the money — or prefer the Cure go out on a high is another matter.

For once, though, it’s a comeback (of sorts) that doesn’t have dollar signs on its cover.

(Polydor)

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