The Cure – Troxy, London
The Cure – Troxy, London
Gavin Fearnley
Constructed in 1932, Troxy survived the Blitz. But can it survive ‘Friday I’m In Love’?
On an evening where we’ve come to see the launch of the highly-rated latest album, Songs of a Lost World (SOALW), with its “dark beauty” (the Guardian), and “darkness” (NME), while being “dark” (Uncut), one might expect an evening of The Cure’s… erm… darker side?
Yet, it’s the insufferable jaunty chart hit about the end of the working week that gets one of the biggest cheers of the evening.
AaaaAaaaAAaaaaaAAAggGGGggGGhhhhh!
Apologies. In my despair, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Ahead of the concert, in the cold East End air, there seems to be only one question doing the rounds in the queue: “How did you manage to get a ticket?”
With only 3,000 on sale, selling out within three seconds (according to the ticket app), it’s a good question.
Not only does having secured a ticket feel like a being a football manager bringing home the cup, a few fans waiting to get in seem genuinely surprised there’s a new album at all.
It’s more than two years from the launch of their last European tour in Latvia where songs from this album were finally premiered after its pre-Covid announcement – a new long-player felt imminent.
When it didn’t arrive, some wondered whether ‘Songs of a Lost World’ would ever be released in this world, never mind a lost one.
“If I have one regret is that I said anything at all about it in 2019,” said frontman Robert Smith in a recent interview. “I really shouldn’t have done that.”
Yet here we are.
When the definitive history of The Cure is written, it will state that SOALW was launched without extensive tour dates.
Instead the band performed only two sets for the BBC, and then gave this concert.
Thunder and rain sound effects play out, slowly getting louder before the band walk on.
And when they do, it’s notable how well the band look, especially keyboardist Roger O’Donnell who just a few months ago revealed he was fighting cancer. The musician turned 69 earlier in the week.
Before a single note is played, the audience sees what hundreds of thousands watching live via YouTube can’t in the dark; Smith turns to Jason Cooper, formerly the drummer in My Life Story (a Cure band member since 1995 but somehow still ‘new’), with his arms stretched out.
It’s as if he’s summoning and catching the spirits of Cure World. It lasts such a long time, you wonder if there’s been a technical issue.
Finally, the band launch into ‘Alone’ – it’s a powerful opener both tonight and on the album, inspired by ‘Dregs’, an 1899 work by the decadent poet Ernest Dowson.
Just as Smith is about to sing the opening line “this is the end of every song that we sing,” bassist Simon Gallup just manages to catch his guitar from hitting the floor.
The strap keeps slipping from Gallup’s faux-leopard skin coat that wouldn’t look out of place on Coronation Street’s Bet Lynch or the Manic Street Preacher’s Richey Edwards.
He plays the rest of the young crouching on the floor, resting the instrument on his knee. It’s ever-so-slightly a Spinal Tap moment, and thanks to a few bum notes in a few other songs, not the only one tonight.
It’s followed by ‘And Nothing is Forever’, the second track on ‘SOALW’, a song sometimes eerily similar to 1985’s ‘Happy Families Waiting’ sung by Gallup in his short spell in Fools Dance.
And this is how it continues. The first 40 minutes of the show are dedicated to playing all eight tracks from the new album in order. As it well should be.
Smith appears proud to give both ‘Warsong’ and ‘Drone:Nodrone’ their live debuts tonight and they both sound much better here than on the album. They are probably the weakest songs on ‘SOALW’ but so much better than most tracks on the (unfairly) maligned 2004 eponymous album ‘The Cure’.
The highlight is the overwhelmingly powerful and beautiful ‘I Can Never Say Goodbye,’ about the death of his brother. While singing, Smith has tears streaming down his face, as he did during its performance in almost every concert on the last tour.
It’s classic Cure and would fit comfortably on ‘Head on the Door’, ‘Disintegration’ or ‘Wish’. The final lines are the most personal of Smith’s entire career and given his obvious emotion, you wonder if he’ll be able to finish them: “Something wicked this way comes,” he somehow manages to sing, “to steal away my brother’s life”.
‘All I Ever Am’ comes next, which after just one day has already become popular with Cure fans and then, to finish the album play-through, we hear ‘Endsong’.
It’s one of those songs that really only The Cure can pull off.
It’s over ten minutes long and Smith doesn’t utter a vocal sound for the first six. It’s excellent. It’s true, only The Cure can do this.
THIS is why we love them.
Then they go off. The thunder and rain sound effects start again and the word “intermission” is projected onto the back of the stage.
What follows is the usual mix of songs from the band’s extensive catalogue.
Starting with the chimes and epic orchestra-like ‘Plainsong’, moving into the permanently exquisite ‘Pictures of You’, perhaps the greatest love song ever written, one wonders if the mood will continue to be as funereal as what came before.
It is here, however, that the concert loses some of its momentum.
Naturally, The Cure are much more than a mere “goth band” (a label most bands reject anyway).
Yet, with the new album being compared to their spellbinding and near-perfect pitch-black records, one might have hoped to hear classics like ‘Faith,’ ‘One Hundred Years,’ or ‘This Twilight Garden’ in tonight’s set – not to mention ‘Charlotte Sometimes,’ ‘Sinking,’ or ‘A Thousand Hours.’
It soon becomes clear that this will not be a repeat of the sepulchral ‘Cureation’ which ended the Meltdown festival in 2018.
Instead, we hear pretty much the same set list from the 2022 tour: ‘High’, ‘Lovesong’, ‘Burn’ (from The Crow soundtrack), ‘Fascination Street’, ‘A Night Like This’, ‘Push’, ‘Inbetween Days, and ‘Just Like Heaven’.
The epic ‘From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea’ and the incredible ‘Disintegration’ end this segment restoring some of the comforting gloom of the first 40 minutes.
Five songs from Seventeen Seconds follow, 45 years after the album came out. Notably, ‘Secrets’ makes a welcome return to the live set. The first time since 2011.
As ever with The Cure, they finish with their bona fide pop hits.
It contains some of The Cure’s brighter songs (‘Close to You’, ‘The Walk’, ‘Friday…’, and ‘Why Can’t I Be You?’) and, look, it sends everyone home in a good mood.
People truly love ‘Friday I’m In Love’; the ecstatic reaction to it tonight as if Smith had announced he’d found a lasting remedy for cold sores.
But why do people like this song so much? This one track is a source of mystery to many fans of The Cure and, one suspects, to the man who has to sing it at every concert.
Hilariously, however, the band… or Smith himself… mess it up.
“Ha ha ha,” I cynically laugh in the face of everyone’s joy and happiness. “Take that!” I think to myself.
As they struggle to get it back on track and murder the track-I-skip-every-time-it comes-on, the two corners of my smug smile almost reach my eyes.
No one knew it was possible, but I look even more satisfied and pleased with myself than normal.
There are confused faces on stage and some smiles. But none bigger than mine.
After three hours, the gig ends with ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, and Smith lingers a little on stage before walking off.
As I leave Troxy to get the tube, I hear some concert-goers singing ‘Friday I’m in Love’ to each other in the enormously long queue for the merch.
Isn’t every day on the radio enough?
When they come to write the definitive history of The Cure, still the-best-band-on-the-planet by the way, there’s a danger that what Simon Price describes as “the Cure song” for “people who don’t particularly know or like The Cure” (in his excellent A-Z of The Cure, ‘Curepedia’) might be the one people remember most.
But if Troxy could withstand the Doodlebug in 1940/41, then I’ll cope with hearing ‘Friday I’m In Love’.
A new tour is planned for 2025. We’ll be there, as will ‘Friday…’ no doubt.