Live Review: The Cure

Dad always said, “The Cure is for lovers.” I was 15, listening to Disintegration or Three Imaginary Boys or Wish or Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, basking in the goth world Robert Smith created, all while caught up in the sheen of first love. 

It occurred to me, watching The Cure’s Disintegration 30th anniversary show that Dad had always been right. The Cure songs that hit you right there are the ones about love, whether it’s the highs of it, the devotion in Lovesong, or the end of love, the breaking to pieces of the title track, or a sense of wistfulness in Pictures Of You. 

Everyone assembled at the Opera House tonight – rusted-on goths, Brits, overenthusiastic boomers, cheery millennials – has these little memories of falling in love, and falling in love with The Cure in particular. What’s the point in buying tickets to a retrospective show if the album at its centre doesn’t mean something to you? There was a sense, waiting in the dark, smoke filling every nook in the room, the sound of a storm over the speakers growing louder and louder, that many of us were mining those nostalgic feelings, those deeply held associations. 

It felt fitting to have Andrew Thomas Huang’s intricate, oft-purple Austral Floral Ballet projected onto the Opera House sails as Robert Smith and his band emerged onto the spiderwebbed Concert Hall stage. The whole room stood to applaud, before settling back down. A scattering of people stayed on their feet, swaying in time, while others stood up and raised their arms only for their favourites, whether for Pictures Of You or Fascination Street. Many ignored the artists’ request for no photography or video to be taken during the set, trying to capture for posterity the bright rainbow strobes of the latter, or Smith’s face projected in close-up on the back wall for Last Dance. 

The room seemed to shimmer along with the music, even as blinding light illuminated more than just the stage. There’s a kind of moody ambience to the stage set-up, Smith mostly stationary with his signature make-up and backcombed hair, while long-time bassist Simon Gallup – he and sturdy key player Roger O’Donnell the only other current bandmates to have worked on the record – performed with the most energy as he jittered across the stage. At times the pair dueled guitars, Smith getting so close to Gallup during Homesick he appeared to whisper something in his ear. Afterwards Smith, voice reverberating, joked that the song would be “genius” if they had intended for it to sound like they were that drunk. 

Smith spoke rarely – his bandmates didn’t even have mics – but always with a twinge of gratefulness. Mostly the brooding 60-year-old gazed down at his lead guitar, or stared out at the audience, clutching the mic stand during verses, his slightly lower vocal range still sounding album-polished. During Lullaby he seemed to try out a spider-like dance move, sashaying to the left, as a spider on the projection behind him moved closer to the centre of its web. While largely reverent, eyes glued to their Goth Lord, the audience howled with Smith when he cried out in Disintegration.

It’s a privilege to have experienced this show, to have felt the lush songs – especially set highlight Fascination Street – consume the room, bass shuddering up through the floors, like the hungry Spiderman of Lullaby. Perhaps Smith too had come face to face with memories and associations, with his past self, to create this show, which also featured a lacklustre post-ovation set of deep cuts from the same late ‘80s era. The rarities, while keeping with the broody mood, apart from Fear Of Ghosts and Delirious Night failed to pique the crowd like standout album tracks. 

Smith left by describing his feelings at the end of night one of five anniversary shows, as “a weird mix of feelings”, because having never revisited Disintegration in this way, he didn’t know how it was going to go: “[I’m] feeling very, very sad, and very, very happy.” As I'm washed out into the night, I'm not feeling so mixed, instead grateful to have experienced the divine.