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Live Review: The Cure @ Pantages Theatre 11/22

Live Review: The Cure @ Pantages Theatre 11/22

The Cure’s Robert Smith walked on stage in front of a very sold out crowd at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood to start night 2 of the 3-day Los Angeles stop of their “Reflections” tour … and he finished 45 songs later! This unique and stunning concert experience was exactly that, for old fans and new, it was an experience. It was a celebration of the band’s origins. The first three sets consisted of The Cure’s first three albums played in their entirety: Three Imaginary Boys (1979), Seventeen Seconds (1980), and Faith (1981). The three encores that followed were filled with B-sides and popular singles from throughout the band’s history, providing every fan both with something familiar and something new.

As Los Angeles saw with prince’s takeover of the city earlier this year, it’s great when an artist does something different and unique for their fans. The Cure’s “Reflections” tour gives their fans a new way to experience their performances. The opportunity to see an album played in its entirety is rare (i.e. Flaming Lips playing The Soft Bulletin @ Hollywood Forever in June), so the opportunity to see three consecutive albums is truly novel. The Cure has a very extensive discography from over 30 years of releasing albums and a 45 song set is a pretty damn good way of giving fans the songs they want to hear.

The show was organized like a 4-act play. It started with the quirky, offbeat, and unpolished Three Imaginary Boys. Their debut album has hit singles such as “10:15 Saturday Night” which started off the night and “Fire in Cairo”. It is the most recognizable of the three albums on this tour and immediately engaged the crowd. The stripped down stage and white lighting during this set played perfectly to the minimalism of the album.

Seventeen Seconds, as a second act, provided a more dramatic scene with the dark and eery whispers of “M” and a beautifully haunting version of “A Forest”. Fog machines turned the stage into a vision of the forest from the song and front lighting cast large shadows of the band members on the curtains behind the stage. Robert Smith’s shadow, whether intentional or not, resembled the shadows behind the curtain in their “Boy’s Don’t Cry” music video.

 

 

The third act, Faith, acted as the resolution to the 3-act play with a tone of wistful funereal grandeur. Then, to keep the play analogy going a little longer, the cast came on stage and played the hits! Smith finished with three encores, moving from one great song to the next. The crowd sang and danced to “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” which are B-sides from Three Imaginary Boys that were included in the full length album Boys Don’t Cry. The third encore finished on a great high with “Let’s Go to Bed”, “The Walk”, and “The Lovecats”!

Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard

 

The Pantages Theatre provided an excellent backdrop, not surprisingly, for the theatre angle of the night. The sound quality was excellent and Robert Smith’s surprisingly strong voice and trademark squeals permeated every corner of the theatre. The expansive venue was necessary for the capacity crowd while still allowing for high acoustic quality. However, Pantages was not ideal for the rock concert angle. The security staff was noticeably unaccustomed to dealing with the type of crowd at a rock show. There were several bars inside the venue but no alcoholic beverages were allowed inside the theatre area, which led to masses of unsuspecting people with full drinks huddled around TVs with a live feed to the show they weren’t allowed to see. Thus fans had to decide: miss songs or chug your drink? Not a very difficult question to answer, but very inconvenient. Security staff also patrolled the aisleways strictly enforcing the “stay in your assigned seat” and “keep your arms and legs inside your area” policies.

It’s impossible to play every song in their catalog, so casual fans of “Friday I’m in Love”, “Close To Me” or the Wild Mood Swings album may have been left wanting. The “Reflections” tour, however, is not intended for the casual fan. It is a celebration of the band’s history and their fans, and its something other bands can learn from.

 

Set List:

Three Imaginary Boys

10:15 Saturday Night

Accuracy

Grinding Halt

Another Day

Object

Subway Song

Foxy Lady

Meathook

So What

Fire In Cairo

It’s Not You

Three Imaginary Boys

The Weedy Burton

 

Seventeen Seconds

A Reflection

Play For Today

Secrets

In Your House

Three

The Final Sound

A Forest

M

At Night

Seventeen Seconds

 

Faith

The Holy Hour

Primary

Other Voices

All Cats Are Grey

The Funeral Party

Doubt

The Drowning Man

Faith

 

Encore

World War

I’m Cold

Plastic Passion

Boys Don’t Cry

Killing An Arab

Jumping Someone Else’s Train

Another Journey By Train

 

Encore 2

Descent

Splintered In Her Head

Charlotte Sometimes

The Hanging Garden

 

Encore 3

Let’s Go To Bed

The Walk

The Lovecats

Tags: Pantages TheatreReflectionsThe Cure

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