Bloodflowers by The Cure

Bloodflowers, the Cure's eleventh studio album, was finished by May 1999 but held back until February 2000, landing in Japan first, then in the UK and Europe on 14 February and the US a day later. The label wanted it out once the millennium fuss had died down. Robert Smith produced it himself, with Simon Gallup on bass, Roger O'Donnell on keyboards, Jason Cooper on drums and Perry Bamonte also in the ranks.

This is the Cure in full dark-cathedral mode: slow-burning gothic rock, guitars and keys piling up into great melancholy swells, Smith sounding like he's watching something end. He refused to release any singles from it, a bit of payback for how little push the label had given the 1997 compilation Galore. Radio still got "Maybe Someday" and "Out of This World" as promotional singles, and "Maybe Someday" is the one listeners clung to.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.