The Cure Live Review

The Cure Mopes Through Town With Songs of Love, Endings and War

By JON PARELES
Published: June 23, 2008

There’s no question that Robert Smith has one of rock’s most irritating voices. It’s quavery and strangled, yelpy when he raises it and morose when he doesn’t, the voice of a hypersensitive high-school poet who cherishes his own wounded feelings. But if that voice were any less irritating, his songs for the Cure wouldn’t be anywhere near as durable.

Rahav Segev for The New York Times

The Cure, led by Robert Smith on lead vocals and guitar, played Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night.

Mr. Smith has been agonizing over love, loss and insecurity since the Cure released its first single in 1978, and the band’s mope-rock has persisted through eras from new wave to emo and beyond. His voice, needy and unkempt and immediate, separates the songs from maudlin pop. Who else could sound less than sappy when singing (in “The Perfect Boy,�? a new song), “The two of us is all there is/The rest is just a dream.�?

At Radio City Music Hall on Saturday night the band methodically laid out each part of its musical patterns: drumbeats from Jason Cooper, bass lines from Simon Gallup, overlapping guitar hooks from Porl Thompson and Mr. Smith. The band relies on the orderliness shared by Minimalism and dance music, letting Mr. Smith’s voice smudge and puncture the musical grids. In its current four-man lineup, the Cure can pound and drive like a punky new wave band, particularly in the songs it has been releasing as previews of its 13th album, due in September. More often it lets the guitars reverberate, with the music swelling to match the yearning in Mr. Smith’s lyrics.

Mr. Smith, a portly figure with a mop of jet-black hair, was an unassuming frontman who embodied the shyness of his words. He blurted out his vocals and danced gawkily in the few songs where he didn’t play guitar. At one point he started speaking nervously onstage, chatting about the weather, calling his patter “rubbish,�? then concluding, “This is why I don’t talk.�?

The Radio City Music Hall concert was the Cure’s second New York show this week, after a Madison Square Garden date on Friday. Knowing that it has obsessive fans, the band changed much of its set from the night before. Songs were more or less grouped by topic. The set started with lyrics about endings and mortality — “Out of This World,�? “Want�? — and moved to unhappy love songs, nightmares like “Lullaby�? and “Kyoto Song�? and happier love songs like “Just Like Heaven.�?

But then the Cure moved to another topic: war, with video screens showing soldiers and destruction in “One Hundred Years.�? The Cure’s first single, “Killing an Arab�? — originally a postpunk condensation of “The Stranger�? by Albert Camus — also took on wartime connotations. The concert ended with the gloom of “A Forest�? and the dire drone of “Forever.�? The Cure was not about to provide anything as poppy as a happy ending.