Robert on 'Bloodflowers'...

"It's almost like I'm winding up and going over the subjects that have interested me over the years, trying to distil what I've always wanted to say and how I feel about things at this point in my life,' he explains. 'It sounds very heavy, with lots of guitars. It's quite loud and sort of dark ...
"'It sounds like old-fashioned Cure; it falls in the canon alongside Pornography and Disintegration. The kind of obsessive listener who was into those albums will like it." (Alternative Press, January 1999)

Where did the album´s title come from?
"I read a book of letters of the painter Edvard Munch. He said that he was sure that he had done a good artwork when he felt that a blood flower popped out from his heart. I thought this image was very romantic. As a coincidence, about the same time, i was reading a poetry book about World War I, and one of the poems described how a wound in one of the soldiers, hit by a bullet, opened a blood flower in his body. I liked this analogy, between pain and art - these two images." (Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazilian newspaper - Jan 10th, 2000)

"In 1989, when I was close to my thirtieth birthday, we recorded an album called Disintegration which was for me a very private matter. Since then I've never recorded an album like that one, about me, if you know what I mean. Even if I sang in first person, it wasn't really me. Last year, at the age of forty, I felt the need for an album which could be the counterpoint of Disintegration. It is my most introverted album and it reflects my feelings in this period of my life. I put in it things we have already done before to find the proper way to the inevitable change. This is why I thought it was more logical to release it last year and then, in 2000, I could have dedicated myself to my solo album." (Doctor Smith's Fleurs Du Mal, Giacomo Pellicciotti , Musica , supplement of Repubblica February 3rd 2000 )

"In 1998 when I hit 39 I started to think about writing a record about the feeling of being close to 40. It took me 6 months to get the songs written, but right before going to record in the studio, I just wanted back the spirit of the band as a group. I had a very clear idea in my mind about how those songs had to sound and to be structured, but for the other members it was a bit harder and less enjoyable process. It took me a total of four months to get the
songs recorded: two with the band and two alone, but then when the record was made by the end of June 99 there has been an incredibly long gap, so the album is out on February 2000. It is a very melancholic record, a way of looking back to the last 10 years in The Cure; I felt that I needed to have a look to what I have done just after a decade, but it's got nothing to do with the Millennium fuss! When one hits 40, it's just like when you hit 20 or 30, you have the chance to decide what you're going to do with your life, if you still have a future as well! " (A Night with The Cure, MTV Italy, 15th February 2000)

"The tone is melancholy and regretful. The dominant theme is time passing. There's nothing beyond, no hope." (Kill or Cure? The Guardian, February 18, 2000)

"It's certainly got a nostalgic feel to it. Much as 'Disintegration' in 89 was kind of commemorating turning 29
into 30 I wanted to do the same turning 39 to 40. It's autobiographical but it's slightly dishonest, because I didn't
want to put any pop on it, and even though I felt the urge to do a couple of more upbeat numbers. I really wanted the
album to work as a whole. So I suppose it's sort of where my head's at." (Rip It Up, February 2000)

"Actually I haven´t wrote about myself since "Disintegration" except for songs like "Want" or "Bare", but I haven´t sat down and written a whole album that reflects on how I feel since then. I wanted to do this again now, but I was frightened to have it turn out boring." (Zillo Magazine (Feb. 2000)

"On the last albums I fought against the idea of the Cure having a certain sound. But on this record I used this in a positive way. I wanted the album to sound like us. We've been together for over two decades and you can't always reinvent yourself. It just doesn't work.
"In the past we have attempted different styles, and it was often good. It can be satisfying to experiment even if it's only on a small scale. But I really know that what it all boils down to is there is one particular kind of music, an atmospheric type of music, that I enjoy making with the Cure. I enjoy it a lot more than any other kind of sound". (NY Rock April 2000)

“When we started Bloodflowers in Christmas 1998,” recalls Smith, “we wanted hard electro pop and did a handful of tracks, including Coming Up and ossession, that were used loops and synth bass. We sat around taking various kinds of drugs, thinking, ‘This is the future!’ Suddenly in 1999, I had a road to Damascus moment. I thought, ‘This is fucking awful, this isn’t The Cure.’ I wrote Out Of This World and decided, ‘This is what I want to do’, because that song had more emotion than the six tracks we’d recorded up until that point. So we binned the other stuff - it’s hard to kill six songs, because you’re halfway there, but it was a decision that had to be made. The others thought I’d lost it, but coming back I proved them wrong!" (Record Collector - January 2004)