Aug. 31st,1989-Chicago,Il. (Rosemont Horizon)

Smith,the Cure don't have to use phony remedies

by Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune (9/3/89)

On stage,Robert Smith doesn't tell charming stories about his childhood.He
doesn't dance or do screaming guitar solos.He uses no backup singers,nor does
he point the microphone at the crowd for sing-alongs.He keeps his shirt on.

Yet despite missing virtually every trick of the rock concert trade,Smith and
his band,the Cure,can turn a barn such as the Horizon into a 14,000-person
combination of revival meeting and house party.

This is no slight challenge.Though the Horizon does have a higher proportion
of good seats than most big arenas,it seems-acoustically,at least-to be
better suited to truck and tractor pulls than anything musical.

In their Thursday night show there,the first of two on successive nights in
Rosemont,the Cure managed to sidestep any aural mud-to the delight of a
devoted crowd that would have happily kept them playing another 2 1/2 hours.

It is a response the band must be used to as it approaches the American
midpoint of its (and these next words are the rock equivalent of "the check
is in the mail") "final tour." One hopes that Smith will say it ain't so,
because the Cure puts on a show as satisfying as anything in rock today,not
only for its length but for the passion with which it is performed.

With a minimum of bells and whistles (a fondness for playing in a perpetual
fogbank is their only stage cliche,and it works),the secret to their success
lies in the songs and in Smith's considerable magnetism,evident even when he
is merely standing still,singing or playing guitar.He writes intensely
personal tunes backed by music that ranges from the sparse,hypnotic dirges of
the band's early 1980s records to the deliriously trashy and original pop
that made them surprise superstars in the decade's declining years.They have
reportedly rehearsed more than 50 songs for this tour.Thursday's 28-song
show,though,relied heavily on faithful-to-the-original versions of their
most upbeat material,from the sublime power-chord rock of "A Night Like This"
and "Fascination Street" to the boppy angst of "Why Can't I Be You."

The British band played almost all of "Standing on a Beach," their
greatest-hits record from 1986 that sent them over the top in the States.They
did play all of "Disintegration" (even the two bonus tracks available only on
CD and cassette),their current platinum album that neatly brings together the
band's mope rock yin and pop yang.

Making the Horizon a smaller place was a chore left to Smith's flawed diamond
of a voice,a deceptively powerful instrument that,in its internal tension,
demands rapt attention.It is the perfect instrument to express the
existential dread of his lyrics,which include such gems as "hopelessly
fighting the devil futility"-a line Smith has described as the crux of the
current album.

Opening for the band on the tour is Shelleyan Orphan,a British man-woman
twosome who named themselves after the poet and mix classical instruments
into their music.Caroline Crowley,Jemaur Tayle and hired musicians proved
much more energetic in person than on their latest,almost-too-pretty album,
"Century Flower." They came across as an affecting and innovative mixture of
calmed-down Sinead O'Connor and pepped-up new age music.

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