July 10th-Philadelphia,Pa. (Spectrum)


THE CURE DELIVERS A 30-SONG RETROSPECTIVE AT THE SPECTRUM

by Chris Nelson of the Philadelphia Inquirer (7/13/96)

Few stage props have served a band as well as the oversized chunk of railroad track that rose behind the Cure at the Spectrum on Wednesday. The twisted, broken hulk suggested the contrary turns that Robert Smith has led his group through, and also hinted at the winding course the Cure has charted over its 19-year career. During the 2 1/2-hour show, the band swept through about 30 songs that ran the gamut from merry to melancholy and stretched chronologically from its early singles to its latest album, Wild Mood Swings. Despite the dance-inspiring melodies, Smith rarely stepped from the microphone. He by no means moped - although the adoring crowd likely would have been happy no matter what Smith did. (The show was the band's first local appearance in four years.) He simply devoted his energy to being a professional musician rather than a carefree entertainer. But while this latest Cure line-up offered the audience superior sound, it was unable to maintain the momentum established early on with the one-two punch of ``Mint Car'' and ``Just Like Heaven.'' Wild Mood Swings suffers from a similar loss of momentum, and considering that a third of Wednesday's show was drawn from that album, it's not surprising that the set fell into a deep lull before the encores. The band regained its footing, however, and returned to the stage three times for crowd favorites such as ``Friday I'm In Love,'' ``Boys Don't Cry'' and ``Why Can't I Be You.''


Review by Ed Hewitt of Music Wire (July 1996)

Robert Smith, the brooding, black-eyeshadowed, synth-pop new wave
existentialist at the helm of The Cure , has come to accept the role of rock
star. From the directive to "speak louder and more clearly" that he admitted
over the PA at the band's recent gig at the CoreStates Spectrum in
Philadelphia, to the exquisitely fan-friendly and sensible pacing of the set
list, a Cure concert now stands as a how-to for aging, post-punk new wave
rockers, the next generation of musicians to lurch into middle age kicking
and screaming, or moping and groping, as the case may be. 

On the July 10, Philadelphia stop on their world tour (which continues in
Europe well into December), the Cure offered up a textbook mix of new songs
and old favorites, interspersing old and new, crowd favorites with band
favorites, danceable pop blasts with their more moody, gloomy
music-to-slit-your-wrists-by. Now in his second decade at the helm of the
Cure, amid ever-changing shifts in line-up, rumors of break-ups, luke-warm
critical notices for their new album, Robert Smith has accepted his status
as a rock and roll demigod. Smith and the Cure gave the people what they
wanted, and they were grateful. 

Opening with the suitably brooding "Want," here embellished with sounds like
sea gull cries from keyboardist Roger O'Donnell, crisp cymbal crashes from
drummer Jason Cooper, and trebly, almost purposely-abrasive guitars from
Smith and Perry Bamonte, the band launched into a series of material from
Wild Mood Swings , including a humor-tinged take on the scathing,
wah-wah-driven "Club America," the dirge-like "This Is A Lie." Some thirty
songs and two and a half hours later, a copious sampling of Wild Mood Swings
was made to seem of a part with such essential Cure material as found on
Wish , Disintegration , Head On The Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. 

"Thanks for staying with us through the years," Smith said in the midst of a
stretch of new songs, and he had it right: the audience was packed with Goth
girls and boys dressed in black, hair died an even deeper black than their
eye shadow and lipstick. Anthems to depression and decay were greeted with
the same enthusiasm as were the dance-pop hits, and some of the loudest
cheers went up for vintage mope classics like "Prayers for Rain" and the
show-closing "Disintegration," in which a rock-solid bass line snaked around
air raid siren sounds and chirping noises. Despite the somewhat muddy
presentation, an ancient chestnut like "Charlotte Sometimes," which just
about splits the difference between the two extremes,left no one sitting
down. 

On their latest album, Wild Mood Swings, the band employs guitars, a brass
section , even a string quartet. The Cure has always been at their best when
most direct -- a tightly-woven, hooky drum pattern and bass line bubbling
under lead signer Robert Smith's definitive mope-rock vocalisms were all it
took for the Cure to be compelling, even great. 

Even in concert, the Cure was at its most succinct and exciting when some of
the instrumentation was stripped away. Save for a few ringing, terse,
surf-guitar-on-Percodan guitar solos, Smith's first-position guitar
strumming was little more than clutter. When he put the guitar aside, the
band was noticeably more dynamic and tight. It also freed Smith to
concentrate on his singing, which was serviceable throughout, but compelling
and even exciting when he wasn't strumming his guitar.
O'Donnell's attempt to replicate the horn sound on "Numb" was ill-advised,
sounding more like the screech of an impending car wreck than a punchy horn
section. 

There were moments that the band succeeded as a guitar band: Smith's ringing
guitar noodles and bassist Simon Gallup's three-note riff dovetailed
perfectly with O'Donnell's 20-second synth wails on "Prayers For Rain," and
Bamonte's underwater guitar warbles on "From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea"
provided a suitably weighty atmosphere as the band rocked hard and furiously. 

Among the new material, the best moment of the night came on "Strange
Attraction," not because it sounds most like the "old" Cure (which it does),
but because it best capitalizes on Smith's rare talent to write and sing
melodies that follow the rise and fall of speaking cadences. This is Smith's
genius as a songwriter, a talent long considered a hallmark of the great
standard writers. If it's unlikely that
we'll see a gown-draped cabaret singer "interpreting" Cure songs anytime
soon, we'll just have to count on Smith and crew to do it themselves.
"Strange Attraction" even sounds like it could be an outtake from an album
by the hip-hopper Speech , whose very name suggests a similar bent. 

As a singer, Smith strains to cover what is finally a sizable range, and his
rather limited, if well-pitched, vocal technique is mitigated by his
patented mix of pathos and ironic, existential distance. Smith has the pipes
to carry the entire show, and sounds as good now as he ever has. So when's
the Unplugged set due? 

The Cure offered two encores, the first a giddy and only occasionally
perfunctory run-through of some of their best three-minute pop songs,
including "Friday I'm In Love," a somewhat muted "Boys Don't Cry," "Close To
Me," and a punchy "Why Can't I Be You?" The second encore was almost a
mini-set, positioning "Strange Day" as echoey, nearly ambient, while "Play
For Today" sounded like a swing band gone hardcore, and the fade-out of
"10:15 Saturday Night" provided late night drama. Call it what you will,
synth-pop, mope rock, the Cure; it's still one of England's greatest musical
creations. 

And after a night of basically faithful renditions of the single and album
songs from across their career, Smith took everyone back to the beginning
with "Killing An Arab," the Camus tribute that positioned the Cure as the
literate, discerning depressive's fave. Seemingly in keeping with Smith's
late and not-so-ironic embrace of "le decadence" of rock culture, the song
came off not as the stark, existentialist drama of every 20th Century lit
reading list soundtrack, but a roiling, psychedelic rave-up. Smith knows
it's not 1978 anymore; would that everyone else could follow his lead. 



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