The Cure for what ails — new album, tour

LOS ANGELES — This year has marked quite a U.S. comeback for British goth-punk band the Cure.

In May, the band headlined the second day of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., performing for more than 50,000 fans. Cure founder singer-guitarist-songwriter Robert Smith has lent his vocals to songs by Blink-182, Tweaker and Junior Jack, and 311’s cover of the Cure’s “Love Song” is a radio hit. The Cure also has a new record deal with I Am Records/Geffen Records and released its 13th studio album, “The Cure,” on Tuesday.

Smith says the turning point in his post-millennium career was meeting rock producer and I Am Records founder Ross Robinson in 2002. Neither has been the same since.

“I truly trust Ross,” Smith says. “I let him take control and guide me — something I’ve not done since the early days. I think it’s the best (album) we’ve ever done.”

Smith says Robinson also gave him the space to get back in touch with his pop/goth sensibilities and encouraged him to pen the album’s first single, “The End of the World.”

“We’ve always been not quite mainstream,” Smith says. “Which I think has served us well.”

Robinson, a longtime Cure fan, says he often drew inspiration from Smith’s work while producing such acts as Korn, Limp Bizkit and At the Drive-In.

“We’re all starving to death to feel heart and beauty and love,” Robinson says. “We’re starving, and that’s what Robert does. People forgot — especially with the industry scrambling to figure out the formula when there isn’t a formula. It’s beauty and love coming through the invisible as music, and he’s the very best at it. Nobody’s better. That famine is being fed through Robert on this record.”

Smith says that Robinson inspired him to be less self-conscious onstage. “He really reawakened my love of performing,” Smith says.

The Cure this month will embark on its first major U.S. tour since 2000’s outing in support of “Bloodflowers.” In the past few years, the band has been a continuous touring presence in Europe, but Smith says, “America is such different scale.” The 16-date Curiosa Festival 2004 tour, which kicks off July 24 in West Palm Beach, Fla., is expected to draw huge crowds. Smith hand-picked all the bands to join the festival, which will include Interpol, the Rapture, Mogwai, Muse, Thursday, Cursive and Melissa Auf der Maur. (The only band that declined the invitation to join was Bright Eyes because leader Conor Oberst refuses to play Clear Channel-supported shows.)

“These bands don’t all sound like the Cure,” Smith says. “But they do have the same passion and emotion for music that we do.”

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Jordan Schur, co-president of Geffen Records, says the Cure is as relevant today as it was when the band burst onto the scene in the late 1970s. “Robert is as cool as he’s ever been,” Schur says. “He’s brought great vision and incredible energy to this (album). He’s my hero; (the Cure’s) music is the soundtrack to my life.”

Schur, a longtime friend of Robinson’s from their Korn and Limp Bizkit days, inked a deal with I Am Records last year when Robinson left his venture with ArtistDirect.

“I always believed in Ross,” Schur says. ’We’ve been looking to be in business for so long, and the opportunity finally arose.”

When asked if 15 years ago Smith would have envisioned himself where he is now, he laughs and says: “I thought I would be domesticated by now. But we just kept going.”