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The Cure in NYC

Post past and present concert & album reviews and interviews.

The Cure in NYC

Postby schwenko » Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:38 am

schwenko
Room at the Top
 
Posts: 5375
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2003 12:20 pm
Location: USA

Postby schwenko » Mon Nov 28, 2011 8:17 pm

[quote]Originally posted by schwenko
[br]http://www.aeglive.com/artists/view/1415/The-Cure?CFC=AEGLIVE_ENEWSNYC102611AEG001

Sugoi !!!
[/quote]

from the NY Times 11/28/11


"At the Beacon Theater on Friday night there were fans of the Cure, the long-running and influentially dismal British band; fans of the first three Cure albums, which the band was playing back to back; and people who were just excited to be at a Cure show — any Cure show — in 2011. The Venn diagram of those three groups probably doesn’t include anyone overly keen to hear “Descent,â€￾ a sulking instrumental B-side from 1981.

And yet “Descentâ€￾ they got, a side effect of the urge for completism trumping the urge to entertain. This show was part of the Reflections tour, which had previously stopped in Sydney, Australia; London; and Los Angeles, and which ran for three nights straight at the Beacon, Friday being the first. To celebrate the Cure’s early years, 1979 to 1981, many in the sold-out crowd wore period clothing, some had period makeup and the truly ambitious had period hair.

Robert Smith — the centerpiece of the band, its frontman and main songwriter, and its heartthrob for mopers — stuck mostly with the hair, a voluminous tangle that had less shape and drape than in its glory days, but was no less striking.

The tour ups the ante of the recent complete-album-show-as-comeback-vehicle phenomenon by including the group’s first three albums (the British versions), with emended lineups for each to add historical verisimilitude.

For the band’s 1979 debut, “Three Imaginary Boys,â€￾ it was Mr. Smith, the bassist Simon Gallup, and the drummer Jason Cooper. For the 1980 follow-up, “Seventeen Seconds,â€￾ they were joined by Roger O’Donnell on keyboards. And for the third Cure album, “Faith,â€￾ from 1981, Lol Tolhurst was added on percussion and keyboards.

Typically, these sorts of shows head right for the red meat, highlighting the brightest spots in a band’s catalog. First, though, rarely equals greatest. A show like this is an opportunity for storytelling and embellishment, or for revision and updating. Instead, this was a class assignment, a dutiful recital, a touring museum exhibit.

The albums performed predate the Cure’s gothic jubilation of the late 1980s and instead show it in its bumpy experimental phase. “Three Imaginary Boysâ€￾ is a clear outlier in the catalog, skeletal and angular and giving in to the post-punk of the time, but not committing to it. The quaver in Mr. Smith’s voice at the end of the album’s “So Whatâ€￾ was the first recognizable Cure moment in the show. Two songs into “Seventeen Seconds,â€￾ now with keyboard, the band was finally familiar, muscular and brooding, with Mr. Smith baying at full power. You began to hear the seeds of bands like Depeche Mode, who borrowed the Cure’s solemnity but not its outright misery.

But the Cure softened once it got to “Faith,â€￾ one of the most ponderous albums in its catalog, and a record that set the template for a decade-plus of elegiac grimness. Really, though, it was just mulling over a still not fully formed idea, responding to its first bits of pop success with overthinking and darkness.

The story of the Cure, not told at this show, is how it reconciled those competing urges in the decade that followed these albums. Thanks to “Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Meâ€￾ and “Distintegration,â€￾ it became one of the great album bands of the 1980s, and a semi-regular presence on the American pop charts.

Hints of that came through in the three encores — full of B-sides and some later hits — each one cheerier than the one before, a blistering and often joyous hour of music (excluding “Descent,â€￾ natch) that was practically a rebuke to the show’s main conceit.

Maybe Mr. Smith already felt hemmed in by the limitations he’d set for himself. “I would love to spend an hour telling you what we did in 1980,â€￾ Mr. Smith said in the turnover period between “Seventeen Secondsâ€￾ and “Faith.â€￾ Maybe next time."

Sugoi !!!
schwenko
Room at the Top
 
Posts: 5375
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2003 12:20 pm
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