My first Cure show, and I had a blast. A couple of quick things from last night through a first timer's eyes.

-"Never Enough" is a monster live. I like the song normally, but it's better live, bigger and heavier. More crunch. "The Walk" also stood out as a significant upgrade from its recorded version. And I've always loved "Want"
-"Step into the Light" is really disappointing. As mentioned earlier, it's lyrically weak, and there's not enough there musically to save it.
-Crowd lagged a bit during the first two encores. People were definitely looking for something they recognized, and the first two encores weren't providing that. The last two encores completely changed that feeling. Crowd got right back into it, and it was a really strong run to the end of the show.
-The Disintegration tracks work well to open a show. It carries the flow of the album, they're recognizable tracks, and it feels like the band is free to go wherever they want following that run. It helps to open up the show in the sense that you have no idea where they might decide to go after those songs.
-"Just Like Heaven" made the crowd collectively lose their shit. Everyone up and dancing at the point.

I could nitpick on songs I wish I had heard, but honestly, I had too good of a time to really care. The setlist was more than entertaining enough as it was. Glad I finally got to see this band.

Awesome!

NYC night 2 (19 June):


The Hanging Garden has only made a small handful of appearances this tour and hadn't been played since Portland/Ridgefield.

NYC night 3 (June 20):


Tour debut for Bananafishbones.

I'm still on a high from that show. I just hope a recording shows up. I thought about taping but I was on the lawn and I figured it wouldn't be worth getting caught that far from my car (we took a shuttle bus) and denied admission.

Honestly, that show has also been my favorite setlist of the tour, but I'm definitely more of a Disintegration/Wish guy than the mid-80s stuff.

Definitely one of my favourite setlists so far too.

Columbia, MD (22 June):

I'm disappointed the Cure never got on the 'official bootlegs' bandwagon.

In fact, for a band whose live reputation has always been excellent (and who work very hard on rehearsing etc.), they really have relatively few live releases.

Very upbeat, single-heavy set last night in Charlotte. Sounds fun.

Yeah, certainly a pretty unique set:


Seems like a really fun show.

Tour debut for Mint Car.

Only two more shows on the US leg of the tour, perhaps they'll continue shaking up the sets?

Atlanta, GA (24 June):

really enjoyed the MPP/Columbia show. I'm not a big fan, I have disintegration, kiss me and the singles, but I thought they sounded great. probably better than the tame impala/m83 show the week before!

Miami, FL night 1 (26 June):


Dig that Pornography-themed encore.

I liked that a lot. I have a lot of time for Cure fans who aren't convinced Disintegration is the greatest album of all time.

I appreciate his take even if I adore Disintegration and can't imagine preferring "Never Enough" over anything on it

I would definitely take Never Enough over a good chunk of Disintegration, especially the 12" version.

Miami, FL night 2 (27 June):


Those Seventeen Seconds and The Top-themed encores are just

In the break between the US tour and the forthcoming Pacific jaunt (Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia), let me bore you with some tour stats so far:

- 33 shows.
- 81 unique songs.
- Lovesong and Just Like Heaven were the only songs played at every show.
- Mint Car, The Drowning Man, The Same Deep Water as You and The Top were played only once.
- Boys Don't Cry closed every show except one, the tour opener in New Orleans which closed with It Can Never Be the Same.
- Open (er) opened 12 shows, Plainsong opened nine, Out of This World opened eight, Shake Dog Shake three and Pictures of You opened once.

I think the only other Aussie attending the upcoming shows is Mr W. Bloke, so I suppose this may be for his benefit only, but there's a Telstra competition for 20 people to watch the band's soundcheck in each city: https://www.telstra.com.au/thanks/music/the-cure-comp

(Oh, and you have to be a Telstra customer, so there's that to consider too.)

Cheers! Entered.

Looking forward to this show, I must say.

I read the T&Cs and you can enter as many times as you want. My laptop auto-completes the fields in the entry form, so I've entered quite a few times now...