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The Cure wowed Philadelphia on their first appearance here since 2008.
Jun
The Cure can play both dark and light songs with equal skill. They don’t care much about the middle ground (except for their hit “In Between Days” which is a happy song). The band showed both sides of their music at the Wells Fargo on Saturday night. The fans of all ages loved it and cheered loudly.
Robert Smith, the Cure’s frontman, wanted to make the tickets affordable for the fans. He fought against Ticketmaster’s variable pricing system that raised the prices based on demand. He also convinced the company to refund some of the extra fees that the fans had to pay. The Cure also sold their merch at reasonable prices. Their T-shirts were only $25, while other bands charge $50 or more.
The band’s first Philly gig since 2008, with a career-spanning 29-song, two-hour-and-45-minute set, was about kindness, even as Smith spoke of isolation, deep melancholy, and dark fantasies.
Smith recognizes the irony of composing popular songs about alienation, and he appears delighted to be in the role of elder statesman from the Goth world he helped to create in the early 1980s, as well as from the new wave age of MTV successes later in that decade and into the 1990s. He walked around the stage, waving and smiling to the audience, both before and after the event.
Smith, at 64, still wears black eyeliner, smudged red lipstick, and a scraggly shock of bedhead. He donned a roomy black jacket over a black David Bowie T-shirt with “Bowie” in sequins on Saturday night. His voice was as powerful, clear, and strained as it had always been.
The Twilight Sad, a Scottish shoegaze band, opened the show with a 40-minute set of songs from their albums since 2007. Their singer, James Graham, has a strong Scottish accent that reminds me of Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode. He sings with power and passion over the guitar effects of Andy MacFarlane. They played a moving tribute to Frightened Rabbit by covering their song “Keep Yourself Warm”. Frightened Rabbit’s drummer, Grant Hutchison, is now part of The Twilight Sad.
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