The Cure in Kraków, 20.10

The ageless, ageing Robert Smith. Over time, he has turned into a big old softie. He puts his hands on the chest in a humble gesture of gratitude. He walks around the stage at the start and at the end of the show, saying thank you to each fan who dares to establish the eye contact. He does small talk between songs - saying irreverent things that seem to genuinely amuse him. He even cracks a silly joke about trying to speak Polish. He no longer pretends that this is the last album by The Cure. The last tour. The last everything. Moreover, he actually says after the inevitable encore capped off with "Boys Don't Cry" that he will return to Kraków. Like I say - a softie. 

And yet when that voice bursts out halfway into the opener "Alone", it is like we are still in the early 80s and he still means it. All that anguish, all that yearning. I guess he does still mean it. Which is to say - these days, Robert Smith is in imperious form.

photo by Tomasz Stańczak

Indeed, it would be hard to find a person who has been unimpressed by a live show from The Cure. The soundscape which they create is so monumental and so engrossing that you are effectively eaten alive like the unfortunate narrator of "Lullaby" (which is performed with the aplomb that it deserves). A friend of mine who has never been a fan once told me that he accidentally caught them live at the Leeds Festival ten years ago and was left speechless by the sheer power of the sound. Even more amusingly, his twelve-year-old daughter whose love for rock music at the time did not stretch beyond "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers, was equally dazzled. And so despite the steep price and the fact that I had to travel to another city on a week day, I could not afford to miss the concert.

Oh but it is a grand occasion. A relatively big opening act (The Twilight Sad - competent but lacking identity), a string of somber e-mails notifying you of the exact time and zero tolerance for electronic tickets. So that even before you actually get there and walk through a dozen checks on the way to your seat, you know you are in for the show of your life. 

That it is not could hardly be blamed on the performance. The band gave it all, and every little detail that makes The Cure so great live was in place. The long, intense build-ups. The majestic wall of sound. Robert Smith's charisma. The restrained yet captivating stage antics (everyone was somewhat static except for the bassist who was crawling about like a drunk spider). The musicianship. The voice. No, my complaints are very personal and could be deemed improper by any other member of the audience. Still, I have to say this: beyond the inescapable "Just Like Heaven", the band played nothing from Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (which, let us be clear on this, is The Cure's greatest album). The sharp, clever songwriting of that LP was eschewed and, instead, Robert Smith favoured more sprawling, epic compositions of Disintegration. Which is understandable in view of its critical and commercial success, but I have never been bowled over by its somewhat meandering nature.   

Still, this is of course merely a matter of personal taste, and there could also be people equally let down by the surprising underrepresentation of Pornography. Because you cannot really go wrong with a vast catalogue like that, and both "A Forest" and "Play For Today" chug along in a hypnotic fashion, "A Night Like This" is a timeless classic, and "Close To Me" is, well, "Close To Me" (that is to say, one of the greatest songs ever written). They play the latter during the final encore, together with "The Walk" and "Friday I'm In Love" and all those songs that Robert Smith plays with an odd mixture of gusto and total indifference. But he is a softie, we have established that already, so he has to give people what they want. Most importantly, however, is that he debuts a few songs from The Cure's mythical new album (which, according to Smith, should have been released days, months, years ago). I will not say much about them, everything The Cure do live sounds great, but there is no question that "And Nothing Is Forever" is one of the most beautiful songs Robert Smith has ever done. 

Kraków is a city of smells. Everything has its own distinct smell here, from autumn leaves to restaurant food to dapple grey horses prancing around Main Square. In the end, the smell becomes so immense that I take off my headphones (playing Wish, inevitably) to give myself to it entirely. They will lead you anywhere, those smells. To Jewish cafes, to record shops, to cemeteries. And then, obviously enough, they will lead you, by way of black leather and thick hair spray, to the Tauron Arena at the edge of the city. Because no offence to dapple grey horses and to the stunning streets of Kraków sugar coated in the golden foliage - but this is why you are here tonight. To see The Cure and the ageless, ageing Robert Smith.