"4:13 Dream" by the Cure

Crossed my mind as well, before "Shiver and Shake"! Ditto "Shake Dog Shake".

Having just relistened to "Baby Rag Dog Book" just now -- it's amazing what you can find out there -- and given the comparative songs above, I would place this one in a "Doubt"/"Shiver and Shake"/"Cut" vein -- Simon's bass starts and carries this whole thing, it's this high-speed grinddown that halfway to an unmelodic Joey Beltram riff and is similarly momentous. And unsurprisingly the recording just can't compete with the pin-against-the-wall feeling of hearing it live.

I'm hoping that is the case; I haven't really caught onto the recordings I've heard.

so it looks like Phoenix got to hear "Want," "The Big Hand" and "The Figurehead" last night -- all songs played the first time on this USA tour... *jealous*

I'll be at the next three: Dallas, Austin, Houston. will report back :)

(I would kill for any of those three in Texas)

Dallas was pretty good last night but I have a feeling it'll get better in Austin and Houston.

New song highlight was "Underneath the Stars," just a breathtaking opener. Lowlight has to be "Freakshow," didn't stand up to the other songs in the pop encore, sandwiched between "Close to Me" and "Let's Go to Bed," tough shoes to fill though.

Other highlights: "Prayers for Rain," "Fascination Street," "Push," "Friday I'm in Love" (it was a Friday night), "Primary" straight into "Shake Dog Shake," "One Hundred Years" and pretty much the entire Three Imaginary Boys encore (aka, 7 songs from that album in a row).

Lowlight from the back catalog: "The Baby Screams," some awful rocked-out version that followed "Wrong Number" and tried to sound exactly like it. Didn't work out.

Overall show grade: A-

Side note: They soundchecked last night with "The Holy Hour," "The Drowning Man" and "Faith" (among others) so hoping those are being practiced/perfected for Austin or Houston...

Bah, "Freakshow" is great, you. SO THERE. And yes, "Underneath the Stars" makes for a wonderful opener -- they'd be fools not to have that start the album.

HELLO
THERE IS NOTHING NEW TO REPORT
WE ARE ON TOUR
HOPE YOU ARE ENJOYING THE SHOWS

SO THERE
ROBERT SMITH

HELLO ROBERT WHAT IS IT MAED

Ned -

The Cure - Underneath The Stars - Dallas 06.06.08

xoxoxo

Woah, that's some heavy goth, man.

Wait..wait...are you telling me this is a new song for them?

yuuuuup

I know...I mean I found the..whatever that list was of the new songs. And I'm so sorry I ignored this thread. I'm so fucking sorry. Oh my god. Please forgive me.

When does the album come out? Is it? When?

September

2009

Hly mthr of gd

Ah! I see you kid, Dan Perry. Surely a new Cure album is due before 2009!

Whoops I got myself confused entirely. Dan Perry has not posted on this thread lately. Crikey.

Please continue as normal. I shall be banished to the stale world of predictable classic rock radio for exactly 34 minutes as punishment.

hahah what'd you hear Bimble?

Oh I was just joking. I didn't actually punish myself like that!

Austin show tonight, the only 100% General Admission show of the tour (as far as i know)...

If you don't get up there and stage-dive and hug Robert and all that you're not a real fan. (I am the fakest fan ever.)

All hail "Fat Bob"! :)

Just got back from the Austin show, wowee! Great show. They played forever and ever!

Can't remember the main set list very well (they did all the singles from Disintegration, and from Pornography we got The Figurehead, 100 Years, The Hanging Garden and Strange Day) but the encores were classic:

1st encore: At Night, M, Play for Today, A Forest
2nd encore: Three Imaginary Boys, Grinding Halt, Boys Don't Cry, Jumping Someone Else's Train, Fire in Cairo, 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing an Arab

Made me wanna rush to the next town and see 'em again, they sounded so good!

Made me wanna rush to the next town and see 'em again, they sounded so good!

Yeah this was a great show. I'm going to Houston tomorrow, you oughta too!

We got a seriously great setlist in Austin tonight, lots of stuff that either hadn't been played before at all on the tour (Torture, The Hanging Garden) or had only been played 2-3 times (The Figurehead, A Strange Day, Catch, Signal to Noise, The Big Hand, Doing the Unstuck), plus the Seventeen Seconds encore -- all pretty lucky I'd say.

More discussion of Austin in the morning though, I'm tired.

Urgh. I wanna bang my head against a wall for missing this tour. Fantastic setlist. i can't believe they'd play "Torture". I don't really care for this song but it seems so random.

I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GUYS GOT THREE IMAGINARY BOYS

woulda gone down to see the houston show tonight but i had work... sounds like they got a nice set with plenty of stuff from head on the door, i would have liked that.

last time i actually saw them play was 1989! bob's voice is still great, and the sound was just excellent. looked like they were having fun, too. i forgot how goofy robert smith was!

only real downside is that the austin music hall couldn't deal with the crowd on a day where the temp hit the upper 90s... the A/C couldn't cope and it was stifling in the thick of the crowd. made people cranky, just near us there a couple of fights! security didn't give a shit at all.

a couple years later, what's the fan consensus on "The End of the World"? 'cause i still think it's awesome and catchy and nice to listen to when i'm sorta sad (a companion to "Boys Don't Cry," i guess)

Good song, worked very well live at the Bowl.

I actually loved that single when it came out.

I must say I like "Freakshow" - its quirky and twisted, good stuff.

So, Austin on Sunday night:

Definitely the most "hipster"-oriented setlist of the Texas shows, lots of rare stuff, b-sides like "The Big Hand" and "Signal to Noise" plus 4 (!!!) tunes from Pornography and 4 more (!!!) from Seventeen Seconds. Not a lot of "pop" stuff was played, no singles aside from the ones they're doing every night.

Music Hall venue was great, though a bit stuffy. I was front/center about 10 feet from the rail, got there an hour before doors opened. This was the only General Admission show of the USA tour (as far as i know) and also the tiniest venue (4,500 capacity), it was like a small theater compared to the arena shows in Dallas and Houston.

The bad: It seemed like the band took about 6-7 songs to really get going at this show. Robert's singing was FLAT during "Alt.end," "Torture" (great set choice, fucked it up though) and "The End of the World" but by the time "The Big Hand" came around 35-40 minutes into the night, it was all good.

The good: Lots and lots of highlights! "Doing the Unstuck" was incredible. "Catch" was perfect. "The Figurehead" straight into "A Strange Day" was killer, just like the album transition (I recall Louis J. stating recently on ILM the necessity of these songs being paired together). "The Hanging Garden," only time that's been played all USA tour, awesome performance there. And it was great to hear "The Big Hand" and "Signal to Noise," both very nice songs. The Seventeen Seconds encore was FANTASTIC, "At Night" --> "M" --> "Play for Today" --> "A Forest" = WOW.

Grade: A- (would have given an A, had the first 30 minutes not seemed "off")

Compared to the Dallas show? Definitely a setlist for the bigger Cure fans than the casual ones. No pop encore like in Dallas, not as many new songs. But i think overall, i enjoyed Austin a little more.

Houston last night:

This was my favorite of the three shows, and mostly I'll chalk that up to song selection. The band opened the main set with "Out of This World" and closed it with "Bloodflowers," both personal favorites from Bloodflowers the album (their most underrated, and a fucking GREAT album), and they squeezed "Maybe Someday" into the middle of the set, their best pop song of the past 15 years (to these ears). I was hoping for some Bloodflowers stuff this show, so that worked out very well.

Additional highlights: "Want" was the second song of the set, absolutely destroyed. A couple nice tracks from The Head on the Door, "Kyoto Song" and "The Blood," both awesome. "How Beautiful You Are," "A Letter to Elise" and then the first encore consisting of "Plainsong" into "Disintegration," all great songs. "Disintegration" and "Bloodflowers" in particular, mindblowing performances both.

The bad: I'm hard pressed to name anything here. The performance was solid the entire night, Robert and the other guys all seemed like they were enjoying themselves more so than Dallas and Austin.

Venue was fucking massive, almost a full arena, maybe 9,000 to 10,000 capacity. Pretty packed too. I was down 12th row center (seated), a bit closer than Dallas, not nearly front row like Austin. Great seats though.

Overall grade: A

In comparison, if Dallas was the most "pop" of the Texas shows, and Austin the most "hip," then Houston just seemed like they wanted to play a big, expansive set with lots of massive songs; one part of the set reads "One Hundred Years" --> "Bloodflowers" --> "Plainsong" --> "Disintegration," which is a lot of sprawling, heavy songs in a row. A lot to take in. But I have no complaints about this show, it was out of this world. Har har har.

You are forgiven. For now.

Anyway.

Very glad that I went to all the Texas shows, now that it's all over. I heard about 15 songs unique to each night, and I'd be kicking myself if I'd missed the highlights unique to any of these shows. I counted up, looks like i saw 67 unique songs over three shows, AWESOME. (The only songs I didn't hear that they've played elsewhere: "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep," "The Kiss," "Other Voices" and "Faith.")

YouTube highlights, all decent quality audio/video:

The Cure - Underneath The Stars - Dallas 06.06.08 - I think Ned mentioned he loves this new song. And rightly so.

THE CURE DALLAS 060608 PRAYERS FOR RAIN - Did i mention how great this was???

The Cure One Hundred Years Dallas, Texas - "It doesn't matter if we all die..."

The Cure live at Austin Music Hall 6/9/08 The Figurehead - This gives an idea what it was like in the midst of that packed General Admission crowd. Very happy this was played.

Doing The Unstuck - The Cure live at Austin Music Hall 06.08.2008 - My favorite song from this show.

The CURE Maybe Someday LIVE Houston June 9 2008 - Incredible.

The Cure at Toyota Center Houston, Texas. June 9th, 2008. Just Like Heaven, and A Letter to Elise. - "Elise" especially was a winner.

I said "unique" in that first paragraph a lot, huh.

i'm so mad i missed this tour but told myself don't see them until there is a new album out. now, after reading this thread, that was a huge mistake. can't wait for the new album and looking forward to seeing them real soon or end of this year, beginning of 2009.

Another video showed up on YouTube, definitely worth checking out. This is a new song they played in Houston (for the first time on the USA tour), and along with "Underneath the Stars," it's by far the best new song they've played live.

LIVE! A Boy I Never Knew - The Cure Toyota Center in Houston, Tx 6/9/08

Alright, the new single "Freakshow" is seriously great. I haven't been so excited about a new Cure album since "Wish"

"Freakshow" is their best single since "The 13th".
And this line-up is definitely ace.

"Freakshow" is their best single since "The 13th".

Very apt comparison. And HI DERE Marco!

still able to find 5 minutes to check ILM every now and then.
and ciao to you, Ned! :)

I still don't care for "Freakshow," bah.

"Freakshow" is a bit like a successful "Screw". HI DERE

Whatever, "Screw" is not half bad. Killer bassline.

"Screw" is awesome! (So is "Freakshow".)