Smudgy-faced Robert Smith has stated that this will be the
Cure's last
tour,but nobody believes him.The hard truth is that the Cure has become
the kind of dinosaur act that Smith and others of his ilk professed to
despise when they started out in that brave post-punk dawn of 1978.
Evidence of bigism was rife at this marathon first show of their London
residency.With a combination of mountainous rumbling bass frequencies
and stately synthesizer highs they made a noise that would have dwarfed
a space twice the size of this huge arena.Visually,the individuals playing
the instruments on stage were entirely secondary to the stimuli of the
astoundingly atmospheric light show.
This is the Pink Floyd trick,and comes in especially handy when you
need to dump founder-members of the group,in this case the keyboard
player Lol Tolhurst,whose removal from the ranks (since the recording of
Disintegration,earlier this year) was frankly impossible to detect.
The songs in the main body of the show were long,highly developed
pieces that trod a winding path through the misty groves of gothic
psychedelia.With its slow,menacing tone "The Same Deep Water as
You" was a despondent mantra that unfurled at roughly the pace of
autumn leaves dropping from a tree.One was drawn in as if by the glint
of
the hypnotist's watch and Smith's airy,fagged-out vocals,pasted
carelessly on top of the instrumentation came almost as a distraction
during the harsh,pump-action groove of "Fascination Street".
As the band drifted like scarecrow wraiths through seas of dry ice the
lights bathed the stage in fantastic colours;rose pink and royal blue
during "Charlotte Sometimes", lemon and sunshine yellows during
"In
Between Days" and exquisite pools of mauve,turquoise and orange
during "Love Song".
They left the stage for five minutes then returned for a block of sprightlier
"encores" that,apart from the neo-nursery rhyme malevolence of
"Lullaby",rather destroyed the mood."Let's Go to Bed"
sounded like a
Style Council reject,while "Why Can't I Be You", highlighted
the
odd,almost vaudevillian string to the group's bow which has won them
considerable success in the singles chart.
It would be a shame if the band did quit now,just when they have learned
how to carry off these big shows.