GIG REVIEW - The Cure at Wembley Arena

First, a disclaimer. I was stupidly ill before I went to the gig. A really, really bad cold which had left me with a sore and stuffy nose, a sore throat and, at points during the gig, a tendancy to just want to vomit. This fate was avoided thankfully. But yeah, if I have slight grievances that make me sound awfully grumpy then that might explain why.

Of course, it wasn't just The Cure who I was vaguely interested about. The support band was 65daysofstatic. This is a band who I rank very highly, due to their own fantastic brand of instrumental post-rock. Even if their current album is a bit pants, they still have two amazing albums before that (The Fall Of Math and One For All Time) are fine examples of heavy music with dramatic and exciting soundscapes. The fact that they were playing Wembley Arena, probably, as they said onstage, for the only time in their career, was quite staggering and something I didn't want to miss.

The setlist was brief but somehow they managed to convey their massive noise into the arena perfectly. They are a band meant for these places, but they will never ever get to that status on their own terms. Starting with Drove Through Ghosts To Get Here and ending with the truly magical Radio Protector, it was a set that was truly hypnotising in sound. A couple of technical gremlins aside, it was as perfect a support slot as you could get. I'm now pumped up for their own headlining London show at the Dome (albeit, the smaller arena) on the 11th April.

The Cure came on just after 8pm. I'm not familiar with much of their music (only the hits really) but over the whole set they did somehow keep me engrossed, which, when considering I was highly ill, was some achievement. The setlist itself is the main talking point. It was a three and a half hour long setlist. That's just impressive when you think that the ages of the band are well into their 40s and, for some members, pushing 50. I would have watched it all, had it not been for needing to get home at a decent time, so I had to leave after the second encore. But I felt satisfied at that point, so it wasn't a loss at all.

The setlist itself was peppered with songs throughout their back catalogue. They also played a surprising amount of well-known hits. I didn't think they would play songs like Friday, I'm In Love or Lovecats but it was well received. Standout songs for me were Plainsong, End Of The World, In Between Days, Disintegration and A Forest. They did start off though with a lot of songs that were from their darker side. They should have done what they did for the rest of the set and just nicely mix up the light side and the dark side of The Cure. Big blocks of either didn't really work for me.

The lightshow was executed perfectly. They had a lot of lights, so it worried me a bit before they started because I thought they might go for a manic approach, which my head wouldn't be able to deal with. But, the lights were used in a variety of different ways to suit whatever song they played. Visuals were also used, but ONLY when they were needed and they didn't detract from the performance of the band, who were very tight all evening. Basically, nothing was overused. That is what makes a good stage show in my opinion.

Overall, very decent and watchable performance. But a tip incase you do go and see them at some point. Only see them if you can stomach the duration length. I can understand some grievances about a show of this length.

This was the setlist:

Plainsong
Prayers For Rain
A Strange Day
Alt.end
A Night Like This
The End Of The World
Lovesong
To Wish Impossible Things
Pictures Of You
Lullaby
From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea
Hot Hot Hot
Please Project
The Walk
Push
Friday I'm In Love
In Between Days
Just Like Heaven
Primary
A Boy I Never Knew
Shake Dog Shake
Never Enough
Wrong Number
One Hundred Years
Disintegration
At Night
M
Play For Today
A Forest
The Lovecats
Let's Go To Bed
Freak Show
Close To Me
Why Can't I Be You?
Three Imaginary Boys
Fire In Cairo
Boys Don't Cry
Jumping Someone Else's Train
Grinding Halt
10:15 Saturday Night
Killing An Arab

The pictures on this post are taken from this Flickr account, so do check his photos. Good stuff!

I'm probably gonna do a feature post about concert lengths at some point this week, so do watch out for that.

The Cure

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