1/20/1979
- NME (UK)
Review - Hope & Anchor (12/78)
Concert Review / by: Rich Joseph
1/20/1979 New Musical Express (12-19-78 Islington, England Show Review)
The Cure -
Hope and Anchor
This was a cruel date on The Cure's calendar.
Guitarist Robert Smith had flu and Lol Tolhurst's drumkit kept falling over. The
Hope's basement displayed the charm of a cross-Channel lorry deck, and the PA
vied with the gas heater in the inadequate stakes.
Ostensibly, The Cure had little going for them; yet they salvaged this
unluxurious event from oblivion, largely through their own embryonic musical
talent and their ability to inject a dose of enjoy-serum into the Mivvied
corpuscles of punters present.
Despite their charity-rack instruments, the band played a crisp set. Their sound
was compact and effervescent. Each song was a two-minute cameo of ferrous
punk rock. Their coup-de-gig was the Camus inspired ditty "Killing An Arab": a
zany crossbreed of 4/4 thrash and Moorish bazoukie fever.
The Cure's novel approach to rock is emphasized by bassman Michael Dempsey's
skillfully versatile handling of lead and melody lines played over a rhythmic
drum / guitar backdrop. Intriguing, but it tended to make things top-heavy. Such
is the nature of three-piece dom: streamlined impact is often gained at the
expense of amplitude. The Cure are competent enough to add a fourth hand to the
crew without sacrificing the excitement and originality of their live
performance.
A youthful nervousness, dotted with moments of controlled deadpan enhanced their
stage presence; they played with sufficient enthusiasm to overcome the Spartan
test-tube conditions of this chilly niterie.
Hollering for two encores, the crowd risked frostbite to clap for The Cure.