Portents of an impasse were detected as long as four years ago, when Robert Smith of the Cure talked about the process of sifting through his archive for the 2004 box set, Join the Dots. “Everything I’ve written for the new album, I’m discovering I’ve already sung,” said the spiritual godfather of postemo stadium fillers such as My Chemical Romance and 30 Seconds to Mars.

Sure enough, there isn’t a song on this, the Cure’s 13th album, that doesn’t sound like an inferior version of one they have already written – indeed, in the case of the 23-year-old Sleep When I’m Dead, an actual version of one they have already written.

Underneath the Stars is a sluggish variation on a theme better realised by Plainsong from the 1989 album Disintegration. Scoot to the jivey spook-pop of It’s Over and your thoughts turn to the fraught urgency of the superior From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea, from Wish (1992). And so on.

Becoming your own tribute band is, to an extent, unavoidable. And if we don’t begrudge a degree of repetition from Neil Young or AC/DC, say, there’s no point in giving the Cure a hard time for it.

But what seems doubly strange about 4:13 is the airless, joyless execution of songs such as This.

Here and Now. With You and Reasons Why – a problem compounded by lyrics that appear to have been spat out by some sort of Cure lyric randomising software package, with all the conviction that that entails.

Perhaps the real problem is boredom.

At 49, Smith is beginning to sound like a man burdened by the narrow expectations of a loyal, loving fanbase. At what price a wholesale rethink? It would, if nothing else, be brave. But when creativity is reduced to a mere act of franchise maintenance, something has to give.

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