How Robert Smith of the Cure Became Rock’s Most Dogged Activist

At Brighton Electric, a warren of rock rehearsal spaces in an old brick tram depot in this English seaside town, young guitar luggers stream in and out while the thudding jams of baby bands reverberate throughout the building.

But a corridor in the back leads to a spacious, gear-crammed private studio occupied by the Cure — the multiplatinum band that defined a gloomy strand of British post-punk, and scored international hits with spiky confections like “Friday I’m in Love.” On a recent Sunday evening, the band was gathered to prepare for promotional gigs supporting “Songs of a Lost World,” its first studio album in 16 years, due Friday.

Seated beside his guitar rig was Robert Smith, the group’s leader, explaining his reluctance in recent years do an interview. “I don’t really want my head to be drawn back into this idea that I’m ‘Robert Smith of the Cure,’” he said, raising a blue-shadowed brow. “It just doesn’t suit me anymore.”

Yet at 65, he is still unmistakable as Robert Smith of the Cure, dressed all in black, with a smear of lipstick and his signature tangled mop of dark hair, now a shade of ash. At the Cure’s commercial peak in the 1980s and ’90s, he was a dandy prince of the alternative scene, his disheveled haystack inspiring not just a look but also an entire indie-kid personality type — the lovesick goth — while the band charted a path through melancholic angst (“Boys Don’t Cry”), danceable ear candy (“Just Like Heaven”) and an expansive, moody neo-psychedelia (“Pictures of You”) that made it a model for generations of artists.

Inducting the Cure into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails said that Smith had used his “singular vision to create that rarest of things — a completely self-contained world with its own sound, its own look, its own vibe, its own aesthetic, its own rules.”