The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Credit is due to Robert Smith for personally inviting energetic instrumentalists 65daysofstatic along on The Cure’s latest big-booted stomp around the world. Unfortunately, the incompetence of Wembley’s door staff means that I’m only seated as the last of their gear is being removed from the stage. It’s a real shame, and indicative of the kind of nonsense you expect from soulless hangars like Wembley, where even the best bands have the life sucked out of them by appalling sound and the stench of hotdogs.

But not The Cure. It might be 29 years since the release of their debut album, but as a live spectacle they rival any of their surviving contemporaries, even if they’ve never achieved the iconic status of The Fall, Wire, or even Gang of Four. Instead, largely because of the dreaded and inaccurate ‘goth’ tag, they’ve remained something of a cult concern. For where ‘goth’ might imply the kind of socially useless shrinking violets who are wont to dress as Orcs and bound around smacking each other with rubber swords, The Cure are a picture of both hard work and grace, their music both potent and engaging.

There’s very little in the way of the visual bells and whistles you might expect from a gig this size. Instead, these four men dressed in a way they probably shouldn’t at their age (Bob with slap, big hair, combats; Porl Thompson bald, tattooed and in a skirt; Simon Gallup mincing in vest and tight jeans) fill Wembley through the power of their music alone.

You could try and argue that The Cure’s endless touring, hammering out umpteen tracks (41 tonight) at every show feels a little like they’re comfortably ensconced in workmanlike middle age, as dependable in their chosen office as a balding civil servant about to get his square of carpet might be; professional but passionless. But from the opening, euphoric ‘Plainsong’ right through the next three-and-a-quarter hours, they deliver a flawless set made up of a fine tapestry of textures The Cure have embraced over the past three decades. So there’s the epic, atmospheric material from the Pornography, Disintegration and Bloodflowers trilogy, to the edgy, intellectual pop that makes up most of the three encores; the dark majesty of ‘The Forest’ or ‘From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea’; the quiet romance of ‘Pictures of You’.

They’ve outlived punk, post-punk, synth pop, willowy indie, Britpop, and the 32,343 genres invented by the music industry since. If only they can be reclaimed from the tenacious, snakebite-stained claws of the suburban gothic, then their true status as one of the finest bands the UK has produced might yet be assured.