A Glum Ending for the Cure

“The time always comes to say goodbye,” sang the Cure’s Robert Smith in the title song of the band’s new album, “Bloodflowers,” Saturday at the Palace. Indeed, that time for the English band is now, as Smith has declared that the album will be its last after two decades-plus of glumness, tortured mewling, black lipstick and rat’s-nest hair.

Perhaps fittingly, finality has given Smith a sense of purpose often missing as he’s slouched his way through his career, and this show--an intimate preview of a full tour coming soon--was two hours of pure Cure. There were none of the band’s bouncier KROQ favorites, just odes to dissipation drawn mostly from the new album, plus a few others from the trilogy that “Bloodflowers” completes.

Nearly every song followed the basic Cure formula--slow, vocal-less, droning intro followed by slow, droning main part and a drawn-out build to a slow, slightly more intense climax, all featuring Smith’s overly dramatic lyrics about burning out or looking back on some lost past. Thrill a minute, eh? But it hung together as a solid body of work, the swirling Goth-tinged tones heightened by the relatively close quarters.

Still, the overall impression of this start of the exit march was of watching a fade from dark charcoal gray to black.