The Cure in Liévin (France), Just like a dream
As part of the Euro 22 tour, The Cure was back in Liévin, France, thirty years after its last visit to this hall, that time for the Wish tour. Very friendly support joined the band: the Scottish Twilight Sad, who were already the support band for The Cure during their 2016 tour. With their dark and nervous rock, tinged with new wave influences, the group conquered quite a huge part of the audience with an intense 45-minute set.
At precisely 8:15 p.m. the room got plunged into darkness for a second time and the 6 members of the current lineup of The Cure rose the stage in a thick layer of smoke. Robert Smith was particularly smiling and would stay like this during the 2h45-lasting show. He took a lot of fun on stage and it showed. Simon Gallup and Reeves Gabrel were effective, Jason Cooper’s drumming again was of quality, while Roger O’Donnell and Perry Bamonte were much more discreet, a little outside the party. The sound was perfect, powerful, clear, and limpid but above all, Robert Smith’s voice was incredibly accurate and impressive.
The main part of the set featured four new titles tonight. And a 5th in the 1st encore. Five new titles of incredible beauty! Pure mid-tempo and melancholic Cure as we like, probably among the best genres of the group for 30 years. We can hope for a new album – if it comes out one day, since it has already been announced for years – of a very high standard.
The group would chain wonderful passages for an hour and a half, such as the enchantments “Pictures of you / Closedown / Lovesong”. It’s like being on the Prayer Tour of 89 to the delight of the 10,000 fans present this evening. “Burn” was impressive with a masterful Jason Cooper on drums. “Charlotte Sometimes” and “Primary” have not aged, the different visual effects on absolutely each title of the concert added to the beauty of this setlist which offered nuggets from almost all the albums recorded by the group between 1979 and 2000.
The group left the stage for the first time on the magnificent new “Endsong”, a little dark marvel of almost 10 minutes. The 1st encore, of 5 titles, offered no less than four titles taken from the album “17 seconds”. The very dark “At Night”, the magical “M”, the always effective “Play For Today” and finally, the symbolic title of the group, the greatest of all classics “A Forest”. We couldn’t have done it better ourselves.
The group returned for a second encore of 7 tracks, being some sort of “best of” composed of ‘perfect pop songs’, such as “In between days”, “Friday I’m in Love”, “The Walk”, “Just Like Heaven ” and a final and enjoyable “Boys don’t cry”. Robert Smith took some time to stay on stage to greet the audience, displaying a huge communicative smile. We hope to quickly enjoy the future new album and – while the Cure already is in great shape, as proven this evening in Lievin – back in 2023!
