Feeling glum? You've been Cured

ROCK

Remember that sketch on The Mary Whitehouse Experience every week when Rob (now Robert) Newman would impersonate Robert (still Robert) Smith? In a wig that had been dragged backwards through a can of hairspray, Newman would whine the Postman Pat theme tune, or a Tommy Steele ditty from Half a Sixpence, in a pained, sulky voice. Voila, it sounded exactly like The Cure.

Perhaps in belated response to this pastiche, but more probably in response to their newfound status as a million-selling stadium-rock act, The Cure's new album is a last-ditch attempt to confirm that there's more to them than tortured goth-ery. Unsubtly entitled Wild Mood Swings (Fiction), it's a rather successful attempt, too. The first single from the album, "The 13th", has Latin sizzle - and Rob Newman in the video. The second single, "Mint Car", is the band's very own "Shiny Happy People". But last weekend's concert at Earl's Court was The Mary Whitehouse Experience without the laughs. The show had only one mood, and it wasn't wild or swinging.

The best thing about it was the stage set. Seemingly inspired by a haunted fairground from an episode of Scooby Doo, it had two arcs of rollercoaster track curling over the band, and behind those were streamers of wispy cobweb. Several hundred flashing lights provided additional spookiness, along with more smoke than you get in a series of London's Burning. But the band and their music struggled to get through this fug.

Wherever a song tried to go, its way was blocked by Smith's anguished yawp, the chugging, fuzzy bass, and two hazy guitars, resulting in a pile- up of variations on a theme: goth-pop, goth-funk, prog-goth, Smiths-goth, and goth-goth. (It was a full two hours before The Cure finally played the promised "pure pop". Thank God it's "Friday, I'm in Love".) Being generous, one could say that the uniformity of pace and tone was hypnotic. But as hypnotic shows go, Paul McKenna's is more entertaining.

When some of the smoke blew out of the way, you could see that Smith was motionless, his guitar hanging off him, not working the crowd, not really working at all. Likewise, if you turned down the distortion and stripped away the interminable, grandiose, instrumental introductions, you'd be left with slight little pop songs, lacking in direction, and built on the fragile foundation of repeated three-chord patterns.

How can The Cure have kept this up for 20 years, when two and a half hours was bad enough? It's a question that appeared to be occupying most of the bored-looking, 12,000-strong audience. Maybe the answer is that the band have an intriguingly outlandish appearance, but peddle music that is familiar and unchallenging. Tonight, The Cure were just Simply Red with eyeshadow.

To her publicist she is "the only British female singer-songwriter consistently writing hit songs". To the public, she is the south-London girl with the endearing burnt-sugar voice who used to sport a sequinned eyepatch, and now has a slab of fringe glued over the right side of her face, in a cut- price impersonation of the Phantom of the Opera. She is the chart-topping, Brit-winning Gabrielle, and she has just returned from a three-year maternity leave to deliver an eponymous album (Go! Beat), and a leisurely Top 10 single, the Stax/Motown homage, "Give Me a Little More Time".

Those of us expecting more of the same at the Jazz Cafe on Tuesday were disappointed. Gaby's eight-piece band slid through a glossy jazz-funk selection, mostly taken from the new album, with unremarkable lyrics about breaking up being hard to do, but not as hard as staying together. It's wallpaper music. Tasteful wallpaper, true, but still not a very original or thrilling way of hiding the cracks in the plaster. And Gabrielle's shy, uncharismatic demeanour was not going to convince anyone otherwise.

With little progression since Dreams, the material seemed old-fashioned, too, although "Give Me a Little More Time" was the only song deliberately old-fashioned enough to be unusual. From the horn section's first plump parps, it was the set's highpoint. Meanwhile, the ballad "Alone", accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, hinted that there's more mystery and feeling to Gabrielle's voice than initially meets the ear. The rest was so innocuous that it was only fitting, when she explained the story behind one song, that she should apologise for using a mild swear word.

The awards that magazines and businesses dole out to pop groups every month or so should include a Best Stage Patter category. Spontaneity and humour should be given extra points. Barbra Streisand would be disqualified: on her 1994 tour she read her quips from an embarrassingly visible autocue. Liam Gallagher wouldn't even get a placing. But the winners, almost every year, would be Neil Finn and Nick Seymour of Crowded House.

On Monday the Antipodeans played in the minuscule Hanover Grand ("From the Borderline to Wembley to the Hanover Grand. Now that's progress"), ostensibly to publicise their forthcoming Greatest Hits album. ("I first heard the word `ostensibly' on a Jethro Tull record, and I've been waiting for an opportunity to use it ever since.") Singer/ songwriter/guitarist Finn quizzed an audience of fan-club members and music-biz people on Crowded House trivia, and bassist Nick Seymour decreed the theme of the evening to be Polynesian barbecues. When a request was called out from the floor, Finn admitted: "We haven't rehearsed that one. Mind you, we haven't rehearsed anything else either ..."

For once, he wasn't joking - but we weren't complaining. On record, their sweet and spiritual songs can be too polished for some tastes, but on- stage Crowded House music has rougher edges, tougher guitars, and the resourceful multi- instrumentalism of band dreamboat Mark Hart.

Even on vinyl, "Don't Dream It's Over", "Pineapple Head" and "Weather With You" are nothing to be ashamed of. Crowded House are located in the same melodic-adult-rock neighbourhood as REM and Teenage Fanclub (both of whom are exemplary patter merchants themselves), even if they're not in quite as fashionable a street. And the Best Of compilation, Recurring Dream (Capitol), comes with a bonus live CD. Assuming that it includes some between-song chat, it could be one of the season's best investments.