The Cure’s first round since 2016 is one of the best rounds of 2023
COLUMBIA, Maryland – This year’s sleeper hit hit from Los Angeles to New York allows fans to channel the inner goth of their youth and dazzle with an expansive setlist of nearly 30 songs.
Ahead of their May tour kicking off in New Orleans, The Cure haven’t toured around the US since 2016. But last year’s trip through Europe offered frontman Robert Smith, 64, and the band the chance to improve their live production.
Sleek and melancholy, the two-hour, 45-minute show winds down into its final concerts, with a July 1 finale in Miami followed by festival dates this fall.
At the Merriweather Post Pavilion on Sunday, the band explained why its followers remain so fanatical.
The Cure’s new music is as solid as its classics
Fans have been waiting for a new album — “Songs of a Lost World,” which pairs with the tour titles on Shows of a Lost World — since Smith revealed the title in March 2022.
Despite not definitively reaching The Cure’s first release since 2008’s “4:13 Dream”, the band has included several new tracks on all of their shows.
The main set is bookended by upstarts—the Pink Floyd-like opening “Alone” and devastating “Endsong,” a bleak meditation on aging (“No hopes, no dreams, no world… I don’t belong here anymore”) with Guitar wobbles and cymbals smash.
But between the aching longing of “Lovesong” and the starry background, ceramic lighting and jagged guitar tinkles of “At Night,” sat a definitive new Cure creation.
Smith turned his back on the adoring crowd, swaying during the performance of indefatigable drummer Jason Cooper, before unleashing an agony-crushing vocal on “And Nothing’s Forever.”
Smith’s voice enveloped words like, “My world has grown bigger, but it really didn’t matter if I said we’d be together,” indicating his heart still swelled with sadness, if not darkness.
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The Cure’s tracklist taps into deep cuts as well as thumps
One of the highlights came when Smith confronted guitarist Simon Gallup—the band’s second longest-serving member—over the raucous intro to “Pictures of You”.
The ballad, from The Cure’s landmark 1989 album “Disintegration,” showcases all the hallmarks of their sound—watery guitars, evocative synths, and a slow burn in an explosive soundscape beautifully unfolded on stage.
It was also one of the few songs played before the encore, which was peppered with several fan favorites, including the upbeat “Friday I’m in Love” and soulful “Just Like Heaven” (both of which seem to always seem at odds with The Cure’s frequently depressing orientation).
Instead, the show’s core highlighted less audible gems like “Burn,” from the 1994 soundtrack to “The Crow,” complemented by crimson lights bouncing around the stage as Cooper hammered the layered beat; the standard groove of “At Night” and the handclapping of “A Forest”, both from the band’s second album, 1980’s Seventeen Seconds; and “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” from 1992’s hit “Wish,” which was anchored by relentless keyboard riffs from Roger O’Donnell until the song exploded into a rousing rumble.
Let’s also tip hat to Reeves Gabriels, and Perry Bamonte for their danceable guitar playing on “Push,” the song from their 1985 album “The Head on the Door.”
Robert Smith has not changed
Smith remains the focal point of The Cure — and how could he not be with his trademark stack of black hair, smudges of crimson lipstick, and polished eye makeup? His voice, a mixture of plaintive wail and soft tone, also bears as a distinct undiminished voice.
But Smith also makes his appreciation for the band’s fans known. On Sundays, as he did throughout the tour, he spent the first several minutes of the show walking around every section of the stage, quietly greeting the audience with his eyes and accepting the gifts thrown at him.
His gaze was one of gratitude mixed with disbelief that after all this time, people still appeared.
Apparently, the grieving prince of Gothic is still king after four decades.
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