155. The Cure

Wembley Arena

1 December 2016

It’s a strange thing, watching The Cure play Wembley Arena. Like finding your old, heartbreak-stained diary being read out on the main stage at Glastonbury. These are songs that were never meant for stadiums, they were meant for bedrooms. For rain. For mascara smudged trips in the back of a bus. Yet, here we are, my oldest friend, me and 12,000 other people.

We arrived to find our seats blessed with proximity to two very drunk northern girls from Manchester, who had clearly misunderstood The Cure as a warm-up act for some sort of wine-based hen do. And bless them, they were magnificent. Hair everywhere. Shouting at every quiet moment. Dressed like they’d lost a fight with a Claire’s Accessories. Within one verse of “In Between Days,” we were dancing with them. By “Lullaby,” we were family. I don't know their names, but I will never forget their commitment to wine and flailing.

Robert Smith shuffled on like a hedgehog emerging from the fog, with his hair in full birds-nest bloom and his face painted, looking more like your Nana than ever. And from the first note, he reminded us why The Cure are still one of the greatest British bands to ever mix pop with pain.

The set was a three-hour journey through every corner of their vast, shadowy discography. The hits were there: “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Pictures of You,” “Close to Me”, sounding massive in the best way. But the deeper cuts were where the real magic lay: “A Night Like This,” “Fascination Street,” and the devastating sweep of “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” which landed like a synth-drenched meteorite.

Smith barely said a word all night. He didn’t need to. Every crack of his voice, every guitar squall, every whispered lyric was enough. He played like a man possessed by his own past, dragging all of us down the rabbit hole with him. And we followed whilst the Manchester girls were doing interpretive goth ballet in the aisle. It was perfect.

Here is the thing, the unvarnished truth about The Cure. Everyone thinks they are a goth band. But listen, just listen to them. They are, at their heart, a really great rock band. Yes, it has some affectations around it, but at its core, this is world class, rock ‘n roll songcraft.

By the encore, the place had turned from reverent cathedral to joyous party. “A Forest” was stretched into a ten-minute sprawl of perfection. “Friday I’m In Love” was euphoric and when the band finally took their bows, Robert whispered “Thank you” like a ghost through a hangover and vanished once more into the dry ice.

We left hoarse, half-deaf, waving goodbye to the staggering, mascara-streaked Manc lasses, all of us happy, some clearly more than others.