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The Cure Offer A Look Back And A Bit Of The Horizon

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

Lead singer Robert Smith led The Cure through its 30-year songbook, but included glimpses of a forthcoming album.

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By CURTIS ROSS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 12, 2008

TAMPA - As The Cure prepared to leave the stage before Wednesday night's encore, lead singer Robert Smith stepped up to the mic, stopped, shrugged and walked off the stage.

Really, what was there to say?

Smith and his band mates -- guitarist Porl Thompson, bassist Simon Gallup and drummer Jason Cooper -- had just finished a two-hour plus set of more than two-dozen songs, running the gamut from the grim humor of "Shake Dog Shake" to the effervescence of "Just Like Heaven."

The show, which drew a crowd of 7,612 to the Forum, was a feast for Cure fans, with Smith and Co. playing new songs from a yet-to-be released album and dipping all the way back to the band's beginning with "Boys Don't Cry" and more during the encore.

Despite plenty of longtime Cure favorites in the set, this was no backward-looking greatest hits show. The band opened with a new song, "Underneath the Stars," which was as gloomy, epic and gorgeous as almost anything in its catalog.

Then again, for tear-stained beauty, "Pictures of You," from 1989's "Disintegration," was almost impossible to beat.

The expertly paced set bundled together tunes from particular albums or periods - "Pictures of You," "Fascination Street" and "Love Song," all from "Disintegration" - came early in the set, while more luminous fare from 1985's "Head on the Door" and 1987's "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" bolstered the show's energy at midpoint.

The Cure is often pigeonholed as gloom merchants, and while few acts do dark as well as them, the show emphasized the versatility of the band's signature sound, with pop, dance, punk, rock and new wave all figuring into the mix.

The second encore was a treat, as The Cure played a half-dozen of its earliest cuts, including "Grinding Halt" and "Killing an Arab."

When Smith finally left the stage nearly three hours after first taking it, amid a storm of feedback following a mighty "A Forest," he had made it clear that his 30-year-old band remains as vital as ever.

Opening act 65daysofstatic played heroic sounding post-rock, occasionally punctuated with spiky electronic beats. The band's half-hour set was well-received as the crowd trickled into the arena.

Reviewer Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.

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