For the first five minutes of the Cure‘s headlining set at Øyafestivalen in Oslo, Norway, Robert Smith stared out at the packed crowd and smiled. As the band played the long, atmospheric introduction to “Alone” — the opening track of their great 2024 album “Songs of a Lost World” — Smith stood there positively beaming,
Two minutes and thirty seconds into the title track of Rachika Nayar’s Heaven Come Crashing, an absolutely massive drum and bass beat drops. As a fan of Nayar’s debut record Our Hands Against The Dusk, it caught me off guard. That album has no percussion on it at all. Heaven Comes Crashing is almost entirely