The Cure News

The goth rockers had planned on releasing their 13the studio album in October, but their label confirmed Friday that the street date had been pushed back to the spring as the band focuses on a fall tour.

A Geffen spokesperson says the album won't drop until April or May 2008. It was originally due this past May but then got bumped to October.

"Whenever I think we're finishing it, it becomes something else," Cure mastermind Robert Smith told Billboard in June. "We recorded all 33 backing tracks with scratch vocals last April, May and June. Then I took a break to knock the words into shape and figure out which of these songs are going to make the album."

Smith said he got hung up perfecting the lyrics. The tracks have such typically gloomy titles as "The Hungry Ghost," "Christmas Without You," "The Perfect Boy," "Please Come Home" and "Lusting Here in Your Mind," according to Billboard.

"There are songs about relationships, the material world, politics and religion. They're very upfront and dynamic," the "Boys Don't Cry" crooner added. "People will be surprised how stripped-down and in-your-face the record is."

Smith has said he hopes to issue the new album in both single- and double-disc versions.

Also preventing Smith from giving his complete attention to the new material was the Cure's live DVD, Festival 2005, which had to be finished for a Dec. 5 release.

If nothing else, the delay means the band will stick to its pattern of four years between studio albums, beginning with Wish in 1992. The Cure's most recent was a self-titled 2004 release that entered at number seven on the Billboard 200.

Smith and cohorts have three dates remaining on a tour of Australia and New Zealand before they are slated to kick off a North American trek on Sept. 13 in Tampa. The 20-date road trip wraps up in Dallas Oct. 17.