SCREAMY-BOPPERS TAKE CURE AT IRVINE

For anyone who’s followed the Cure and its leader Robert Smith’s career, it seemed unlikely that this veteran English post-punk outfit would become Tiger Beat material. But at a sold-out Irvine Meadows on Saturday night, the former patron saints of the doom-for-lunch bunch were greeted by zealous hordes of screamy-boppers, riveted by Smith’s whines of significance.

Even though the band’s on the brink of a wider commercial success, the Cure neither patronizes nor panders to its audience. New rock music’s own Brother Grim, the shy and rumpled Smith conveys a childlike sense of wonder with dark undertow. His anguished singing at odds with his often kittenish demeanor, he led the quintet through a long set of its recent techno-pop fluff (the New Order-like “In Between Days” and the KROQ hit “Let’s Go to Bed”) and hallucinatory drops into the primal void (“Hanging Gardens”). From stately to silly, Smith’s Cure displayed both the power of dreams and the power to elicit screams.