That’s not to say the show was just a greatest-hits victory lap; newer material rounded out the set, some of it from the band’s vital and mostly great 2004 self-titled album, some of it from their upcoming follow-up. If the new songs don’t prove as timeless as The Cure’s vintage material, they sure go down easy. Who cares if their newest single, “The Only One,” is a retread of their Wish-era radio pop (and a virtual rewrite of “High”)? What fan wouldn’t be thrilled to have more music this romantic, this dramatic, this brilliantly dumb?
No Cure concert review would be complete without the obligatory mention of Robert Smith’s weight—yeah, he packed on the pounds a few years ago, and no, he seems to have no plans to lose them—but underneath the padding he’s the same big-hearted entertainer he’s always been, with expressive, make-up enhanced high-beam eyes that make it appear like he’s staring directly at you from across the arena.
He was in rough shape this weekend. Through a sore throat he explained that he’d considered canceling the show, but having already postponed it once when The Cure scrapped a tour last year, he didn’t feel like scheduling it a third time. Despite his apologies claiming otherwise, his singing voice was barely affected, but by the end of the long evening he looked worn down.
For a guy so ill, he sure went all out, though: He didn’t need to mine every single crevice of The Cure’s discography; he didn’t need to play for nearly three hours; he didn’t need to do a whooping three encores, and he certainly didn’t need to do the adorable limp-kitty-paw dance when he sang “Lovecats,” but he did anyway, and for that I love him.
Lacey0
Remember when bands cared about albums as an art form? Instead of
slapping together a dozen tracks because, hey, they'll just end up on
everyone's iPod shuffle anyway, musicians considered how their songs
might congeal as a whole or form some sort of dram
Elvis Costello's frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett produced Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,
an Americana-inflected album working with country and folk traditions
for images of sawdust floors set to mandolin and fiddle. Costello
intended one s
You wouldn’t expect to find T-bone and sirloin dinners at a place with stool seating and a location next to a shop hawking cell phones and cigarettes. But one of the city’s most evocatively named eateries, ZaZa Steak & Lemonade (4919 W. Capito
The enduring fantasy of older men is that a gorgeous
young woman will fall in love with them, find them sexually arousing
and long to imbibe their wisdom while sitting at their feet. That
fantasy is the spring driving Woody Allen's often-hilarious f
Away We Go, a droll comedy-cum-drama by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty),
perceptively explores the lives of more-or-less ordinary 30-somethings
lost in a world without much meaning. Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Bu
