How the Cure, back after 16 years, made the best rock album of 2024

Let’s face it: For most of 2024, for most of recent memory, rock music has been dead.

But just as the Day of the Dead is upon us, the Cure has brought the genre back to life.

The goth gods — who had been left for dead after not releasing a new studio LP since 2008’s “4:13 Dream” — have come back after 16 long years with the best rock album of 2024: “Songs of a Lost World,” which fittingly dropped the day after Halloween.