Stepping into the flavourless confines of Wembley Arena, glistening and soulless as afterbirth following the magnificent stroll up Wembley way, DiS suddenly remembers it’s forgotten its eyeliner. Don’t panic, here’s a face painting stall catering for just that, putting on panda eyes for panicked revellers at minimal expense.

Venture onward into the arena itself and there’s a tangibility to the air that catches in the throat somewhat – of course, of course, it’s the millions of gallons of hairspray being slowly pumped into the venue to ensure our barnets are never less than a volumous mess.

It’s all lies, of course, but almost believable in the context of The Cure’s enduring rep as a baffling cult concern rather than one of the best British pop bands of the last thirty years.

It’s a fact 65daysofstatic might want to consider when serving up their defiantly tuneless post-rock flailings to the gathering hordes. They’ve done mightily well to earn their support slot as a ‘fleeting distraction’ tonight, of course, but try as they might to have their elementary bluster whip Wembley Arena’s monstrous shed into submission, their finest instrumental thrashings drift off into the ether like muffled cries from the gawping belly of a whale.

Playing for pride, then, and they acquit themselves tolerably well – Rob Jones’ furious skin-thwacking gives his instrument a particularly tough time of it (masturbatory overtones a bonus) and the odd jazzy touch offsets their more crashingly generic post-rock tendencies to the greater good.

From this distance it’s difficult to tell if Robert Smith has aged well or not. Certainly, all the surface elements appear to be telling us this enduring Peter Pan figure of pop is in fine fettle. Make-up seemingly dispensed from the business end of a sawn-off shotgun. Shapeless garb that’s basically a one-man advert for personal shoppers. He looks like a portly ghost.

The second thing we remark upon is the incongruous appearance of his fellow performers, a motley crew resembling session musos off the last Marilyn Manson album whose cumbersome posturing represents a sort of middle ground between Guitar Hero bedroom preening and depressed animals pacing their enclosures at the zoo.

Drummer Jason Cooper’s cheesy fills ride regrettably high in the mix, lending a pedestrian undertow to much of the band’s set which, at a whopping three hours in length, seriously threatens to swamp proceedings in a mid-paced miasma of sagging, stadium rock tropes.

But when the band hits its stride half an hour or so into the first stretch, their strengths as an outfit become abundantly clear. Smith’s signature yelp remains one of the most distinct in British pop, while their distinctive guitar sound, which updated jangle for the post-punk era as effectively as more feted contemporaries The Smiths and R.E.M, is present and correct on songs like ‘Lullaby’.

And while their canonical claims are sometimes undermined by dissenting voices decrying their gloomily melodic stylings as fundamentally lightweight (certainly their legacy lacks the chilly lustre of, say, Joy Division), it’s hard to think of a more satisfying career trajectory in the pop firmament.

That arc is lovingly retraced in a generous set this evening that encompasses the emaciated new wave likes of ‘Killing An Arab’ (admittedly less effective in beefed-up rock guise), the more abstract territory explored in the early eighties (‘A Forest’ sounds as liquid and mysterious as ever) and the populist pomp of ‘In Between Days’ and the superb ‘Close To Me’. Say what you like about ‘Friday I’m In Love’ being a radio-friendly imitation of former glories, but it works terrifically well in venues like this.

Deeper into the nineties and beyond and the band descended further into makeweight pop or, with 2000’s Bloodflowers, kneejerk throwback goth-isms, neither of which have exactly conspired to gild their impressive legacy, and on the evidence of one maudlin new track offered up tonight, new material yet to surface may only cement that trend.

But, by the time the third encore has rolled around and audience response hasn’t diminished one iota, it becomes clear that for every moment tonight felt like an epic slog, there were twenty reasons why this band deserve their place among the greats.