For more than a quarter-century
the Cure has relied upon a sterile sound. The brooding and durable U.K.
band's synth-centric output -- sort of electronica minus much of the
melody, or industrial with the subwoofer unplugged -- remains as
processed as anything in pop.
Yet to the credit of founder,
songwriter and go-to goth crooner Robert Smith, generations of kids in
the black-fingernail-polish demographic have found the Cure anything
but soulless. At Merriweather
Post Pavilion on Friday, Smith flaunted his bleak and black
consistencies.
Given that the Cure was the last
of several acts to take either of the two stages on the barnstorming
tour billed as the Curiosa Festival, Smith would deserve kudos had he
merely kept everybody awake. But he never even gave the crowd an excuse
to sit down
at any point in the headlining quintet's 90-minute set.
And though dancing was kept to a
minimum -- other than during a late-in-the-show hits binge of "Friday
I'm in Love," "Why Can't I Be You" and "Just Like Heaven" -- at times
it appeared as if tryouts for the Olympic emoting team were taking
place. When, for example, Smith confessed, "I will always love you!"
during the beautiful "Lovesong," his worshipers wailed those words
right back at him, all the while making the most dramatic hand and
facial gestures possible toward the stage.
And when he moped, "I want to
change!" on "A Night Like This," a mopefest broke out from in front of
the stage to the back of the amphitheater's lawn. But, really now, who
among them really wants change?
"Us or Them," a cut from the Cure's
latest CD, stood out from everything else in the set only because of
the bottom-heaviness of its backing track -- for a few minutes, it was
as if somebody
let bassist Simon Gallup plug the subwoofer back in. Yet it remains
true
that one could more easily find change in a parking meter than in the
Cure's
songbook. "Boys Don't Cry," a cut off the Cure's breakout LP from 1980,
blended
beautifully with other tunes on the set list that were written decades
later.
Smith's influential look hasn't
gone
through any extreme makeover over the years, either. On this night his
coif
was as black and bed-headed as in his vintage poster shots, and he came
to
the stage in the same Halloween makeup he's always applied to his eyes
and
lips. A good portion of the crowd, of course, came to the venue
similarly coifed and made up.
The plea for change wasn't the
night's only dishonest utterance. "Alt.end" found Smith singing that he
was going away, a threat he's issued repeatedly over the band's
history. "I want this to be the end!" Smith whined. And the fans whined
the line right back, with feeling. But chances are good that neither
could pass a lie detector test.