Between the electro of Belgian Charlotte de Witte the next day or our very first concert by The Cure, our heart obviously leaned toward Robert Smith and his wild-haired, phantasmagorical crew. Somewhere between your awkward teen and your weird uncle, Robert Smith is above all, at 67, an icon. The pope of post-punk, new wave, the goth planet, with an indefinable voice, a dark Tim Burton-like look, above all a songwriter with an aura that few singers can claim. With no artifice other than his smoky eyes and his Joker-style lipstick line.
Bordeaux on the Moon
Known for its legendary, somewhat uptight coldness (we’ve seen plenty of pink sweaters tied over the shoulders at other local gigs), would Bordeaux welcome fittingly the last representative of a dying lunar species, fleeing marketing as much as interviews? “It’s all in my songs,” he timidly let slip on stage during this incredible tour, which follows the 2024 release of the album Songs of a Lost World, the fourteenth.
Yes! Bordeaux moved. Bordeaux sang (we never got tired of the “Come on, daddyyyyy, you can do it, you’re gooood,” shouted by our pit neighbor). Bordeaux was red-hot and united. 31,000 people came to inaugurate this very first festival in the city center, on Place des Quinconces, caught between the brown serpentine curve of the Garonne and the magnificent statue of the Girondins and its web-footed horses, celebrating not a declining football team, but the Republican Girondin deputies guillotined during the Terror of 1793. All under a full-moon night that could not have been more perfect.
The Cure dance version
Under these best possible auspices, the band’s fan base lived up to its legendary kindness and its highly photogenic mix of genres: goths, young people, older people (mostly), punks, moms and dads, children. Dress code? Black! After politely turning down a duck-hearts sandwich (the local touch…) in favor of a tray of soggy fries, it was off to the front rows to enjoy this perhaps once-in-a-lifetime concert as best as possible.
A festival concert, but still a 2.5-hour concert, with an overall rather festive tone. Festive is, of course, relative for Robert Smith, whose restrained energy nevertheless radiates through the crowd. The sacred monsters of English rock then rolled out what they do best: music without frills, raw, atmospheric, timeless, strangely danceable, building their hits in a crescendo in an atmosphere worthy of a darkly romantic tale. After a few tracks with badly adjusted, muddled sound, everything settles down for a journey that will sometimes go through distant planets, sometimes familiar ones, even intimate, poetic, or downright all at once.
As co-architect of the band’s most extreme and experimental albums (Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography), the sidekick Simon Gallup, with his enormous arms, seems born to hold a bass guitar. On his own, he moves more than the entire band combined on stage. Still, the The Cure feeling was there. And as its name suggests, it can cure your spleen or, on the contrary, increase it, depending on your mood of the day.
By the way, why the aptly named Festival Pagaille? For getting out, of course. Thirty minutes to leave the concert grounds is far too long in the event of a crowd movement. Either the capacity was not right, or the route. Luckily, Cure fans are the coolest.