Turning intimate anxiety, dreams and hallucinations into troubled pop art placed The Cure at the forefront of music forty years ago, and time has not diminished its splendor. There were Robert Smith and his hosts, this Thursday at the Palau Sant Jordi (sold out), showing off his imperial classics and his legendary sound imprint, handling atmospheric layers, melodic vines and vestiges of its gothic mystery.
Night of recreation of some achievements that created school, although not only that: the group dropped as many as five songs from that new album (‘Songs of a lost world’), which was going to come out at the gates of the tour (which is why it is titled ‘Lost world tour’) to break 14 years of editorial vacuum. And they were placed in noble positions: ‘Alone’ opened the session with his seven minutes of leisurely walking and his unsavory messages: “This is the end of every song we sing / The fire turned to ashes / and the stars were darkened with tears & rdquor ;, intoned Robert Smith with that voice almost always located a millimeter from tears, well preserved at 63. Conclusion in evasive mode: “the world is nothing more than a dream & rdquor ;.
Giant steps
Simon Gallup’s bass, pushing the giant with long, deep strides, connecting with the enveloping poetry of ‘Pictures of you’, pearl of the album ‘Disintegration’ (1989), the most cited, with six songs. Dense architecture, not thick, with the discreet guitar pranks of Reeves Gabrels (who was Bowie’s accomplice for a decade) giving touches of distinction without standing out, making sound ball with the keyboards of the recovered Perry Bamonte.
The new songs opted for the leisurely cadence, with the exception of ‘A fragile thing’, a song about the end of love between a couple. “Every time you kiss me I could cry & rdquor ;. There, ‘Endsong’ stood out above all, with long spiraling instrumental passages and an intricate underground solo by Gabrels. Also ‘I can never say goodbye’, with allusions to his lost relatives. A rather hardcore idea of The Cure made its way into the heart of the concert with pieces from the distant past, with the post-punk tension of ‘Cold’ and the citations to the album-holy grail ‘Seventeen seconds’ (1980), among them. the tormented ‘The forest’, with its looping cry (“again and again and again…”) chanted by the fans. ‘Lovesong’, in contrast, sounded a bit more ‘up tempo’ than the original.
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Cascading Hits
As if his deepest material was not very compatible with his songs with the greatest commercial impact, they were concentrated in a long second encore that constituted a concert in itself. Burned the territory with an abrasive ‘Disintegration’, it was time for ‘The walk’, ‘Friday I’m in love’, ‘Close to me’, ‘In between days’ and ‘Boys don’t cry’. A time of delight for a burning Sant Jordi, reminding us that behind the layers of mist and mystery, The Cure never stopped being a pop band. And pretty good.