The Cure opened its 2023 tour in New Orleans with an epic Goth-pop showcase of 29 songs

Four songs into the Cure’s tour de force of a tour kickoff at a full Smoothie King Center, Robert Smith relished his secret.

“There’s no one in the world who knows what we’ll play next,” the singer gushed Wednesday night, “except the six of us.”

Seven years to the day after the Cure launched its previous North American tour at the University of New Orleans Lakefront Arena, the band started the 2023 leg of its Shows of a Lost World Tour back in New Orleans.

While in town for rehearsals, at least a couple bandmembers visited the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Guitarist Reeves Gabrels and his wife spent two full days at the Fair Grounds; he also sat in with Gov’t Mule at the Orpheum Theater.

Singer/guitarist Smith dabbled in local politics by tweeting his opposition to Louisiana House Bill 341, which would prohibit artists from selling only non-transferable digital tickets.

Smith and the Cure’s team went to great lengths to keep tickets for this tour out of scalpers’ hands. Non-transferable tickets – they could only be sold via Ticketmaster’s no-fee, face value exchange – are a key tool in accomplishing that goal.

A handful of tickets for Wednesday’s show were still available at the last minute for $22. The most expensive seats were still under $200, a relative bargain in an era of skyrocketing concert tickets.

Regardless of how much fans paid, the Cure was determined to give them their money’s worth, and then some.

Across two hours and 45 minutes, the band showcased 29 examples of richly textured Goth-pop. The setlist was structurally similar to last year’s European tour, but curveballs were thrown.

Following The Twilight Sad – could an opening act for the Cure have a more perfect name? – Smith and company strode onstage with purpose. They went to work with “Alone,” the first of five songs in the set destined for the Cure’s long-awaited “Songs of a Lost World” album, the release of which always seems to be just out of reach – much like happiness in a Robert Smith song.

Smith tends to write about sadness, love or both sadness and love. The new songs are no exception. Like Jason Isbell’s “If We Were Vampires,” the “And Nothing Is Forever” narrator expresses a deep and abiding love tempered by the knowledge that, eventually, one of the partners will be the first to die.

“You don’t know how tough that one was to sing,” Smith said. Whether he meant physically or emotionally wasn’t clear.

The show’s lighting design intermingled shadow and light. During “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea,” the musicians were bathed in green. The LED wall behind the band alternated distorted shots of the musicians with literal imagery (a spider for “Lullaby,” a blood-red moon for “Endsong,” etc.).

The Cure have no use for contemporary production values that prefer a clean, uncluttered stage. A low riser was crammed with amplifiers and other gear; it looked like an aisle at a Guitar Center.

The musicians took up their positions and largely stayed there, except bassist Simon Gallup. Along with keyboardist Roger O’Donnell, he is the longest-serving bandmember not named Robert Smith, who has been on board since the Cure's 1978 founding.

With his work boots, skinny jeans, leather jacket, black muscle shirt, modest black pompadour, low-slung bass and combatant’s crouch, Gallup brings a dash of the Clash to the Cure. He ranged across the stage, occasionally squaring off with Reeves and Smith while otherwise serving as the unit’s main moving part.

It cannot be overstated how fully intact the 64-year-old Smith’s voice is. All its fullness and expressiveness, the catches, mannerisms and wistfulness, are present and accounted for.

Psychoanalyzing his mood is a fan’s parlor game, but he seemed to be enjoying himself as much as anyone Wednesday. He was relatively animated and playful.

Pop-hit partisans in the audience may have grown impatient during the long stretch of deep cuts that filled the show’s midsection. The strategy, for better or worse, was to sprinkle in “Pictures of You,” “Lovesong” and “Fascination Street” early, then save additional hits for the homestretch.

But that hit-free zone contained much to savor. The shadings of the band’s sonic palette are as deep as ever. With as many as three electric guitars in play simultaneously, the Cure is most decidedly a rock band, one that layered chiming, echo-y, sometimes droning riffs atop the framework of Gallup’s bass and Jason Cooper’s full-bodied drumming. The band as a whole sounded as fantastic as its singer. They are in a very good collective place.

Reeves, a former David Bowie collaborator who joined the Cure in 2012, attacked his guitar’s tremolo bar during “A Night Like This.” He stamped a fleet-fingered solo on “Doing the Unstuck” as Cooper set a fast pace. Perry Bamonte, restored to the band last year for the first time since 2005, methodically went about the business of coloring arrangements with keyboards and guitars.

“Cold” was mostly keyboard and drums. On the subsequent “Burn” – was slotting it directly after “Cold” a bit of Cure humor? – Cooper thumped out a repeating pattern on his rack toms, hammering away. The peppy “Push” and “Play For Today” led to the storm of sound that was “Shake Dog Shake.”

New songs bookended the first set: “Alone” up top and, naturally, “Endsong,” with its long, brooding, instrumental opening, at the end.

To open the first “encore” – the five-minute break really just denoted the show’s midpoint – O’Donnell draped a mournful piano melody across “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” a new song in which Smith mourns the loss of his brother.

O’Donnell’s synthesizer ushered in “A Forest” as Smith scratched out the song’s signature riff. As the drums kicked in, “A Forest” quickly got up to speed.

The night’s second, shorter pause felt more like a true encore break. “We’re still going to surprise you, I promise,” Smith said.

In the Cure’s creepy “Lullaby,” a spiderman has you for dinner. Yet the song inspired a wacky little Smith dance, his hands undulating after an air-kiss.

The promised surprise was “Six Different Ways,” which, like “A Thousand Hours” in the first set, was resurrected for the first time since 1987. “Friday I’m In Love” didn’t sparkle quite like usual, though Smith gave it an extra coda of acoustic guitar strums.

Illustrating the title of “Close To Me,” Smith ventured to the far left and right of the stage, serenading the folks with the “side view” tickets. O’Donnell’s bright, sweeping synth carried “In Between Days.”

Smith introduced the final “Boys Don’t Cry” with, “It’s been a lovely first night of the tour…but it’s going to stop with this song.”

After his bandmates exited, he lingered, relishing the applause even as he stepped into the shadows.

It was as if he didn’t want the night to end, despite knowing more than anyone that nothing, not even love, lasts forever.

The Cure’s setlist at New Orleans’ Smoothie King Center on Wednesday, May 10, 2023:

1. Alone

2. Pictures of You

3. A Night Like This

4. Lovesong

5. And Nothing Is Forever

6. The Last Day of Summer

7. A Fragile Thing

8. Cold

9. Burn

10. Fascination Street

11. Push

12. Play For Today

13. Shake Dog Shake

14. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea

15. Endsong

BREAK

16. I Can Never Say Goodbye

17. Want

18. A Thousand Hours

19. At Night

20. A Forest

BREAK

21. Lullaby

22. Six Different Ways

23. The Walk

24. Friday I’m In Love

25. Doing the Unstuck

26. Close To Me

27. In Between Days

28. Just Like Heaven

29. Boys Don’t Cry