The Cure’s undisputed status as the kings of the alternative music scene over the last four decades was confirmed when tickets for this thirty thousand plus capacity gig sold out within hours of going on sale last autumn. This was one of two large outdoor shows the band played this week on the UK mainland as part of their summer festival tour.
By the time we made our way into the already busy venue Slowdive were already beginning their late afternoon set to an understandably enthusiastic reception, as their classic shoegaze sound, which seems more popular today than in their early 90’s heyday, shares the same melancholic yet comforting and uplifting mood as Robert Smith’s own ensemble. Indeed, their reverb-drenched complex musical soundscapes share such a similar vibe to The Cure’s slow-burning, mid-tempo songs that they are in many ways the perfect warm-up act for Crawley’s finest, with Star Roving (from their eponymous 2017 comeback album) and signature song Catch The Breeze from their stunning 1991 début Just For A Day) setting the tone for a set rich in shimmering blissed-out melody from alternating vocalists Rachel and Neil.
The lengthy pauses between bands at single stage outdoor gigs not only gives the opportunity for refreshment and comfort breaks but also for extended people-watching. One of The Cure’s great strengths has always been their ability to appeal to a more mainstream audience than any of their goth-adjacent contemporaries, including a much broader age range, with many multi-generational family groups in attendance on this occasion (parenting done well). Although perhaps ten per cent of those present are ‘gothed-up’ to a greater or lesser extent, the vast majority look as if they could be attending any outdoor show: of the roughly 25% of attendees sporting a band t-shirt, the overwhelming majority feature the evening’s headliners, although there was a small smattering of the expected ‘goth legends’ (Sisters, Siouxsie, JD, Bauhaus), a handful of more modern acts (Traitrs, Whispering Sons, Drab Majesty) and some truly random outliers (Madness, Dead Kennedys and All Saints for example).
Only one solitary t-shirt was spotted bearing the name of the main support act, native Scottish band Mogwai, an indication of the niche position their primarily instrumental compositions hold in the musical landscape. If Slowdive are the archetypal shoegaze group, then Mogwai can be considered the ultimate post-rock act, their carefully constructed cinematic noisescapes making them the muso’s go-to musos. Those in the audience who had been attracted to the gig by The Cure’s more playful numbers (The Love Cats, Friday I’m In Love et al) seemed somewhat bemused by the succession of dynamic-contrast-filled musical pieces drenched in guitar-FX floating over the Royal Highland Showground, a unique mix of experimental neo-psychedelia, prog-tinged space rock and groove-based krautrock, underpinned by Martin Bulloch’s metronomic drumming. Their genuinely career-spanning set began with two tracks from last year’s The Bad Fire and ended with the legendary and lengthy Mogwai Fear Satan from 1997 début Mogwai Young Team, but the highlight was Ritchie Sacramento, the closest Mogwai come to a traditional song structure with its plaintive “All gone“ chorus , a moving paen to musicians who lost their lives too young, such as fellow Scottish artist Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit.
The Glaswegian act’s smouldering epics set the scene perfectly for The Cure’s own main set, bookended as it was with intense masterpieces (Plainsong and the title track) from 1989’s seminal goth blueprint Disintegration, which provided a further five songs in a dark set replete with deep album cuts from the first fifteen years of the band’s career. That the band played not a single track from a further trio of seminal gothic albums - Faith, Pornography and 2024’s Songs Of A Lost World - and still produced a mesmering set of darkly dramatic music speaks volumes for Smith’s talent as a musician, whether as singer, guitarist or songwriter, a fact often overlooked due to his cartoonish trademark appearance, a blur of smudged make-up, oversized jumpers and spiderish hairstyles. Now 67, his passion for the music remains as strong as ever, and his vocals show no sign of decline, unlike many of his peers. His subtle and stunning musical interplay with eternally cool bassist Simon Gallup is as much a joy to behold on stage as it is to hear on record, with the rest of the band also on top form: former Bowie acolyte Reeves Gabrels on guitar (with occasional support from Simon’s son Eden Gallup), drummer Jason Cooper (whose energetic tub-thumping made Burn an early set highlight), Roger O’Donnell on keyboards, with Jason’s son Gabriel Cooper providing a sax solo on A Night Like This.
Whilst the inspired pairing of indie hits In Between Days and Just Like Heaven midway through the main set had the whole crowd dancing, the rest of the show was more introspective in tone, with Smith admitting when the band returned for the encore that performing such songs take a lot more out of the band then the “light set” which formed an impressive eight-song encore which was effectively a mini ‘greatest hits’ set ending in a joyous Boys Don’t Cry to send the assembled multitude home sated but exhausted, whilst maintaining the band’s longstanding reputation for marathon gigs of exceptional quality. Not even a bizarre false start to Charlotte Sometimes, which Smith attributed to there being two different setlists amongst the band members (despite admitting that he was personally responsible for the selection of songs) could detract from a memorable evening which once again confirmed that The Cure remain peerless leaders of the alternative pack.
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