The Cure review – an intimate, poignant show from a band more focused than they’ve been in years | The Cure

Two hours into the Remedy’s comparatively intimate launch gig for brand spanking new album Songs of a Misplaced World, Robert Smith begs the sound desk to not use the tape of thunder and rain that has been shaking the jaded grandeur of the Troxy whereas the band have been offstage between encores. “It’s a bit Hammer Horror,” he says. “Play some sunshine.”

Summoning the emotional climate, in all its mild and darkness, is what the Remedy achieve this splendidly tonight. Smith has all the time sung of the nervousness of mortality and need. And though, sonically, Songs of a Misplaced World may have come out at any level over the previous few a long time, it means that honing your craft may be extra attention-grabbing than reinvention for the sake of it.

Usually led by the garrulous bass of Simon Gallup, the band are heavier and extra targeted than they’ve been in years, whereas additionally understanding when to drag again. Smith has stated that these new songs are among the many most instantly private he has ever written, and through I Can By no means Say Goodbye, the music progressively fades, leaving him to sing “One thing depraved this manner comes to remove my brother’s life” alone, in a poignant second of grief for his late sibling.

It’s this type of depth of efficiency that makes Songs of a Misplaced World match so effectively with the giddiness of the next two hours of hits – particularly the half of 1980’s Seventeen Seconds that will get performed in its personal encore. That the Remedy can seamlessly journey from the pure pop of Friday I’m in Love and Inbetween Days to the anxious fizz of At Evening, the gorgeous dirge of Fascination Road and the palpitating menace of A Forest, and that all of it feels so alive alongside the brand new album, suggests there isn’t any signal of ossification because the band method their half century: “We’re practically out of time … however only for tonight,” says Smith.

Throughout Photos of You, a pair who weren’t even born when the music was launched in 1989 leap up for a passionate snog. They get it. Few bands have sung the enjoyment of stealing a second of lust within the storms and chaos of life fairly so fantastically because the Remedy.