Looks aren't everything 

The Cure 
Earls Court, London 

These have not been happy times for The Cure. Wild Mood Swings,
the group's first new album since 1992, has been greeted with a
metaphorical shrug of the music industry's shoulders. Yes, they are
still around; yes, they still make good music; so what else is new?
After an initial Top Ten placing, the album has dropped to the bottom
reaches of the chart after only a couple of weeks. 

Then there is the matter of their mysteriously vanishing tour. To
begin with, two concerts were postponed because of "technical
difficulties". Then Robert Smith contracted a sinus infection which
affected his hearing and balance, and another five shows were
promptly rescheduled for December, leaving just two dates, at Earls
Court. What was supposed to have been a triumphant finale to the
tour on Friday became instead a tentative opening night, while the
second show, on Saturday, was distinctly undersold. 

Still, as we heard often enough when Oasis managed to string
together two nights at Earls Court last November, it is the biggest
indoor venue in Britain. And, unlike Oasis, who simply transplanted
their bar-band act to a bigger stage and turned up the volume, The
Cure know what it takes to put across a performance on such a
cavernous scale. 

For a start, they dressed the stage to dramatic, spectral effect.
Decorated at the sides by a looping stretch of rail from a fairground
rollercoaster ride, and by heavy drapes that looked like trees
fluttering behind, the somewhat nightmarish landscape was
overhung by a huge furled canopy and lighting rig arrangement. The
vague impression that it might represent the underside of a giant
arachnid was bolstered when sinister "legs" unfurled like telescopes
during Lullabye, the song about being eaten by a spider. 

They opened the show with the long, meandering intro to Want,
during which massive cathedrals of light played across the stage,
the dense washes of colour being given a physical presence by thick
clouds of dry ice. Many of the numbers were beautiful simply to look
at, none more so than From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea,
during which a green mist was penetrated by hundreds of pencil-thin
bolts of white light, then consumed by a rolling cloudbank of majestic
purple. 

As in the past, various changes of personnel since the group last
played have not had the slightest effect on The Cure's look or sound.
So, with Perry Bamonte (guitar), Roger O'Donnell (keyboards) and
Jason Cooper (drums) maintaining a completely static and
anonymous presence, the onus of presentation, as ever, fell
squarely on the shoulders of Smith, with some assistance from
roving bass guitarist, Simon Gallup. 

With his curiously anorexic voice and distinctively stiff guitar playing
style, Smith stamped his idiosyncratic mark on the show well
enough, but seemed generally ill at ease. "We usually make our
mistakes in front of fewer people than this," he said towards the end
of the evening, having earlier complained about missed lighting cues
and other apparent shortcomings. 

Whatever the technical imperfections, their biggest problem was the
overall pacing of a set which generally avoided the "greatest hits" and
emphasised the new material, but failed to gather sufficient
momentum to hold the attention over a two-and-a-half-hour span.
The positioning together of two very slow songs, Treasure and Bare,
close to the end was not a good idea, although a first group of
encores, including Friday I'm In Love, helped to retrieve the situation.
Yet more encores followed, this time a bunch of ancient songs,
including Killing An Arab and Boys Don't Cry, their first and second
singles respectively. So much has changed recently, but not The
Cure, and neither old songs nor new could mask the impression that
this just wasn't their moment.