THE CURE Disintegration 30th Anniversary Sydney Opera House, Vivid Live, May 24 Disintegration a classic album? For that is what underpins this run of five shows playing the 1989 Cure album from soup to nuts (with extras). On grounds of significance: for the band as it sailed past three million copies world-wide; for a generation of fans who had been late to the early albums of pop-turned-gloom but discovered the joys of happy grimness; for a subsequent flow of bands who mine

Robert Smith’s merry band of black-clad pranksters, The Cure, will be here mid-year, at the Vivid Live festival, to recreate the 1989 album Disintegration. Sound familiar? Yes, The Cure were here eight years ago to do something similar, in that case playing their first three albums. Did it work – more than 30 years, a dozen iterations and countless badly applied lipsticks later? Actually, mostly yes. Will it work again? Ah, who knows. Maybe this 2011 review will have some poi