The CureThe Cure
There’s a certain type of person who can’t approach a Cure concert objectively. It’s automatically going to be amazing, because it’s three hours of The Cure. I am one of those people. Just getting to see them was worth the hassle of navigating the ACC’s layers of security checkpoints where you have to flash your ticket like a passport.I expected The Cure to be fantastic as usual; they were. The only disappointment was the opening act, 65daysofstatic. I’m assuming that they were having a particularly bad night. No one would really score an opening slot for one of the most important bands of the last 20 years just to mime along to an overwhelming backing track. They sounded like the soundtrack to a movie based on an apocalyptic video game and rocked out so hard it was slightly embarrassing.
They were rendered irrelevant the moment The Cure stepped on stage. They aren’t rock stars in the traditional sense, they don’t swagger and bluster; even Porl Thompson’s showy fretwork doesn’t come off as self-indulgent grandstanding. They are reserved performers. Robert Smith stands still and mumbles an occasional ‘thank you’. Now and then he dances very poorly. He’s perennially rumpled and awkward and fuzzy-haired. Bassist Simon Gallup is the most active, hopping around, pacing restlessly and looking remarkably fit for a veteran musician. It’s what they do, and it’s what the fans came out to see.
The three hour set leaned towards the more danceable side of The Cure, spiked with sprawling, moody songs like ‘Open’ and ‘From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea’. The current keyboard-less line-up subjected the older songs to renovation with greater, ‘Let’s Go To Bed’, and lesser, ‘Lovesong’, degrees of success. Still, they played with such vigor and invention that it was hard to find fault with even the most dramatic revisions. ‘Why Can’t I Be You?’ was pared down to a surprisingly modern sounding bit of dance rock, and ‘Close To Me’ was rendered engagingly twitchy. A certain type of fan was appeased by a revved-up, dissonant ‘Shake Dog Shake’ and the grand, bass-propelled nihilism of ‘One Hundred Years’. After a psychedelic ‘Wrong Number’, though, it seemed to throw some of the audience. They finished the night in high tradition with ‘A Forest’, as Thompson made shadow animals on the projection screens while Gallup delivered the savage, climatic bass solo.
A handful of new songs from their forthcoming 13th album, due out in September, got their Toronto debut, including the new single ‘The Only One’, a pretty, retro ‘The Perfect Boy’ and ‘Freakshow’. It’s always hard to tell from a one night stand, but they were catchy enough.
After three hours and three encores, and a sly roadie teasing the crowd with hope for a fourth, the audience stumbled out into the night, dazed and euphoric. The comedown’s a bitch, but the high is worth it.