Reviewed onMonday July 25
There aren’t many bands who can perform three-hour sets as a matter of course. The stamina required to do so is one thing, but having the quality and quantity of material to keep the show moving is what proves elusive to most. The Cure are an elusive band themselves – sometimes disappearing from the circuit for years at a time, and returning with new lineups to little or no explanation – but when they play live, they make it count.
“I won’t bother waffling because nobody understands me anyway,” says Robert Smith by way of introduction, and from the three-part Disintegration opening of ‘Plainsong’, ‘Pictures Of You’ and ‘Closedown’, an extraordinary pace is set. The current five-piece iteration of The Cure go on to cram 36 songs into the next 200 minutes, spanning 1980’s Seventeen Seconds (‘A Forest’) to 2008’s 4:13 Dream (‘The Hungry Ghost’, ‘Sleep When I’m Dead’) and even newer material (a return to their darker disposition called ‘It Can Never Be The Same’).
As arena acts go, The Cure’s set-up is relatively simple – Smith is the only vocalist, and any effects are triggered live – yet they retain a vital power. The presence of Smith’s iconic voice and flanged guitar has not waned, nor has Simon Gallup’s insistent bass. And it’s these sounds, simply layered, that build the atmosphere behind ‘Primary’, refashioned here as a downtempo Black Sabbath chug, and the eight-minute epic ‘From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea’.
This is no mere recital of old classics: the reinterpretation of lyrics and melodies turns ‘Lovesong’ from romance into a plea, and ‘Disintegration’ from a plea into an embracement of defeat. Images of 20th century warfare and human suffering, projected behind the band on ‘One Hundred Years’, take The Cure to a place of politics they’ve rarely ventured.
The crowd is ready to embrace the moroseness for which Smith is (perhaps unfairly) known, but the setlist itself is clearly divided into parts, as the band leaves and returns four times armed with a slightly different arsenal of masterful pop tunes. As the third and fourth encores come around, the fans are dancing in the aisles to ‘Let’s Go To Bed’, ‘Friday I’m In Love’, ‘The Lovecats’ and ‘Boys Don’t Cry’. The storm clouds have given way to sunshine, and if there’s anything in this world more endearingly joyful than Robert Smith dancing a modest jig to one of his many earwormy hooks, this arena’s stage is yet to see it.
