Gabrels was a late-comer to the Cure, but not to the music world, especially the Boston music world. He spent 20 years in the city playing with groups such as the Bentmen, the Dark, Rubber Rodeo, Modern Farmer, and Club D’Elf before going on to collaborate with David Bowie.
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The Cure has a new album in the works, the first since 2008′s “4:13 Dream.” It’s been mixed, and the band plays up to five songs from it on their tour. They’re just not sure when it will come out or what will be on it.
“There is no release date to my knowledge,” Gabrels says. “We went in [the studio] to keep it concise and do 12 songs we’d all written. Then we worked ‘em up as a band, moved ‘em around, normal songwriting things. And I think we ended up recording 34 songs. We overachieved.”
A songwriting analogy Gabrels says he learned from Bowie: “It’s like trying to get a fire started outdoors, camping. You’ve got flint and kindling and you all have to crowd around it and protect it from the wind so that spark turns into a flame. And you don’t judge the quality of the fire when it’s just the spark. So, we’re in the ‘unfortunate’ position of having 34 pretty good-looking fires going. My point was we couldn’t judge them; we couldn’t see which ones to take to the final stage.”