Cure concerts are always good. For more than ten years they have even been very good. The band no longer has to use tours to promote current, ever-worsening albums, because the last one was released in 2008. Robert Smith has long been able to present a greatest hits program from the back catalogue. Greatest hits means at The Cure: a mixture of long favorite songs like “Plainsong” and pop singles like “Just Like Heaven”. As a live act, The Cure have been living in a golden era since 2010 at the latest.
This concert tour is only slightly different from the last one in 2016, which coincided with the election of Donald Trump as POTUS on a particularly gloomy evening in Leipzig, for two reasons. The Cure have recorded a new album with “Songs from the Lost World”, and like six years ago (back then, a song was still called “It Can Never Be The Same”) they sprinkle no more than two or three samples of it into their set . Tracks like “Alone,” “Endsong,” and “And Nothing Is Forever” all hark back to the slow-motion Doom and Gloom, oceanic heaviness of their idolized 1989 album Disintegration, perhaps because Robert Smith isn’t ready to take any chances as his career falls . In Berlin, the band plays eight of twelve “Disintegration” tracks, you feel like you’re in a time capsule from 1989.
Of course, the emo song titles of the new material seem like they were taken from a Cure title generator, and the song lines even more so. Smith sings “The Fire Is Burning Out”, “This Is The End Of Every Song To Sing” or “I Wonder What Became Of The Boy Who Called The World His Own”. But the material of the three new songs is also being well received in Berlin – new music means new energy, and nothing fears the community more than the Maestro’s periodic announcements that Cure will soon be breaking up.
The second reason why the tour is not very different from the one before is the set list. You can like the stability or not, the choice of songs follows a pattern, although the Cure back catalog hasn’t shrunk since 2008: reverie at the beginning (“Pictures of You”), followed by a quick succession of sad hits (“Lovesong”) , “A Night Like This”) and proof that they wrote the unrecognized New Romantic anthem with “Cold” in 1982: “Ice In My Eyes /And Eyes Like Ice Don’t Move”.
Before the encore, the heavy hitters: “Want” with its still best line that finalizes everything, “I Want Blood Instead Of Rain”, and then “From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea”. These are also the songs that best suit the Cure physicality of today. The band members are over 60 and a bit taller. On “Burn,” Robert Smith, who hates physical contact, rubs shoulders with bassist Simon Gallup. Godzilla versus Kong.
Robert Smith, who inspires countless people and whom Tim Burton should actually pay royalties for all his films, sees more and more – meant in the most friendly sense! – like a clamoring grandmother from hell. The hairstyle even grayer, the spiky hair even nastier. Sorry but every Cure reviewer has to comment on Smithian optics, that’s part of the job description, you can’t ignore that. Only Simon Gallup, who still wore an Iron Maiden shirt every night in 2016, hardly seems to have aged. He wears skinny jeans because it’s still possible and does clash punk, his monitor box reads: “Bad Wolf”. Like Courtney Love, Gallup even climbs to the front box at times. He is closer to the audience than his boss Smith.
As encores, the mega-singles in rapid fire, including “Inbetween Days” and the closing “Boys Don’t Cry”, meanwhile unbelievably 43 years old. Mannerisms still have to be endured with this Cure line-up. Keyboarder Roger O’Donnell intones an Elton John-esque key swoosh from high to low on “Push” that would have gotten him kicked out maybe 20 years ago. And guitarist Reeves Gabrels, whom Smith thinks highly of because he gets to do some of his solos (“A Night Like This”), squeaks more than whimpers, even where he should whimper (“Fascination Street”) ). Gabrels wails a little too often with his instrument in the foreground. Maybe Smith has a thing for him too, listen to his stories because he worked with Smith’s idol David Bowie for many years. Gabrel’s acid test, immortalization on a Cure album, is still pending.
This 2016 time-travelling Songs of the Lost World tour doesn’t disappoint, although it doesn’t surprise. The band plays at least 27 and a maximum of 28 songs every night, so only 28 songs instead of over 30, including “The Hungry Ghost” sometimes one that no viewer has probably ever wished for from Smith. But whoever complained at Pearl Jam this year that there were only 24 songs instead of over 30, got a smack from the fan community: After all, the musicians aren’t getting any younger, aren’t they! Eddie Vedder will soon be 60. In any case, The Cure are back on stage with six instead of five for the first time since the late 1980s. And the more people are available, the more can cushion the aging leader musically.
How great it would be if The Cure did something they’ve never done before, starting their current gigs with “Torture” or “All Cats Are Grey”. Or throw in “Harold and Joe” again. Or The Big Hand alone to promote their November reissue of Wish. They still master the songs, they rehearse them and, unlike the Rolling Stones, they could really mix up their set lists. But The Cure have been a rock band through and through for a number of years now, followed by not just one but at least two generations, a rock band that’s not only playing in bigger and bigger halls in this country. And the clientele that loves “Friday I’m In Love” needs to be served, every night. It’s almost an affront that The Cure have left out “Why Can’t I Be You?” so far. But if you can read before the concert on setlist.fm how exactly the encore block works at a Cure gig, it leaves you with a strange feeling.
The specialist sets are only available for select performances, such as a few years ago at the Royal Albert Hall when live rarities were performed to smaller audiences. The fact that The Cure are currently only appearing in the thick ships under the halls isn’t a bad thing. “A Forest” has never sounded bad. The neon green forest light shines on their stages. Smith sings: The girl was never there / It’s always the same / I’m running towards nothing / Again and again and again and again… The Cure concerts are always good: again and again.