Initially, I was feeling a bit nostalgic. I had started to listen in the mid-eighties, just when they started to really break through into the mainstream (I had lived in a sheltered little community whose idea of edgy radio had been “Hip to Be Square”, until The Head on the Door coughed up “In Between Days” and “Close to Me”. Back in the day, I had always wanted to be part of the whole Cure phenomenon, with the make-up and the hair and all. Part of me had wanted to dress up for this, my first Cure concert ever (15 years after my first album, no less). After a few minutes listening to the inane conversation that seems to go with living the life and looking the look, both Alex and I were feeling like bitter old men: this was once worth emulating? I remember having talked like that at one point (“No, man, everyone loves earlier Frontline Assembly!” “Dude, you’re so wrong!”), and can only surmise that either these were relatively recently-made Cure fans, or somewhere along the line their mental growth was stunted by the hair gel. Maybe it was just part of the dressing up for the show thing: haul out the black hair dye and the shallow conversation that goes along with one’s angst-filled teenage years. We briefly considered selling our tickets and heading back home, but decided to stick it out.

The first hour of the show was a pretty big let-down, probably because of lingering hostility to the overheard conversation from the streetcar, as well as the fact that it was mostly material from Bloodflowers, which featured slow, dense and rather sombre material. The sound mix wasn’t so hot from our location (but when is it ever, in a big concrete-reinforced open-air area?), and a lot of the earlier songs turned into a big bass-heavy fuzz, with much of it actually sounding out of tune, clashing and wrong. The numbers that really connected were some of the older ones, like “Fascination Street”, which got the first really enthusiastic welcome from the crowd.

Where it really kicked into high gear, however, was with a blistering rendition of “One Hundred Years”, from Pornography. That’s fairly bizarre, really, being the opening track of an album that has often been regarded as aural torture, even by fans. Originally, the material was simple but loud, bleak but powerful. 18 years on, however, and it lends itself perfectly to a big venue, filling up every inch of the space, unfamiliar to most but utterly compelling to pretty much everyone. A dance number to slit your wrists to.

Robert Smith has made much of this being their farewell tour, although we’ve heard that every single tour since Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, way back in 1987. If he makes it stick this time, however, he’s certainly got the set list for it down pat, featuring tons of selections that speak about closure and endings. You’ve got “Disintegration”(the title track of you know what, an album that was more than fairly represented through the show), “End” (from the grossly-underrated Wish), an all-Faith encore, and various other numbers that could either be about ending a relationship or a band.

It’s a bit telling that the best material of the night was the older material. It’s hard to say whether this is because the last two albums haven't been quite as memorable as the earlier material (I really can’t tell you if they played anything from Wild Mood Swings, because I found that album so uninteresting that virtually all of it has since slid off of my brain) or because the core unit of Smith and Gallup (is that a gun?) have been pounding away at these numbers for up to twenty years. For a number like “Shake Dog Shake”, it could very well be either, because it’s simple but driving number that has become a concert staple of the band. For something like the new “Watching Me Fall”, it’s a bit harder to tell: it’s one of the standout tracks on Bloodflowers, but in concert it was turned into a gigantic sonic sludge. A bit cleaner, and it could actually have been a highlight, especially if it had occurred later in the show (it was thrown out into the crowd before we’d even gotten a chance to settle into our seats).

Almost all of the albums were represented during the concert, with an obvious skew to the new one. Notably missing was any material whatsoever from the first album, and neither Alex nor I recall hearing anything from Japanese Whispers. Initially I was worried that they’d play nothing from Seventeen Seconds, but the last encore (they did three altogether) yielded both “Play For Today” and “A Forest”, which ended the night and justifiably brought down the house.

It’s conceivable that Smith may actually decommission the band after this outing. How often do you want to be playing all the oldies for a crowd that is growing less and less interested in your newer work? (Notable exception: most of the crowd went nuts for the opening few bars of “Maybe Someday”, the first single from the new album, way before I’d had a chance to recognize it.) If it is their last kick at the (love)cat, then I’m glad I got to see them at least once. It’s a bit bittersweet, however, because they’re still playing the older material SO WELL. Oh well.

Thanks to Eclipppppppppppsie for a few editing suggestions

They say they're never comingback again.