Review: The Cure lifts spirits at Xfinity Center in Mansfield

MANSFIELD - The Cure treated an enthusiastic sold-out crowd at the Xfinity Center Sunday to an uncompromising, often captivating, career-spanning, two-hour-and-45-minute set that included 29 songs in all, plus two killer encores.

Doom-and-gloom poster child and friend to hairy spiders everywhere, Robert Smith, has been dispensing his Cure for the common ode with his Albert Camus-loving, nihilistic band for 45 years now. And his voice doesn't sound like it has aged a day.

As the undisputed granddaddy of Goth pop, Smith, 64, has created some solid, accessible pop songs and intellectual dirge-like brooders while feeding on his unquenchable supply of nightmares. And from the wide range of ages represented in the crowd, mainstream America has finally caught up with the Cure.

Not only is the Cure back on the road in the U.S. for the first time in seven years with the 30-date North American leg of “The Shows of a Lost World Tour,” Smith and his gaggle of ghouls (including bassist Simon Gallup, guitarists Perry Bamonte and Reeves Gabrels, drummer Jason Cooper and keyboardist Roger O'Donnell) recently became unlikely crusaders against Ticketmaster and their practices of costly tickets.

The messy mop sporting Smith spent most of the night singing his dark heart out while shifting from strumming a black electric guitar and black acoustic guitar with a white star on it that matched his monochromatic wardrobe and pale complexion, and, obviously, the mood he's often in when writing his songs.

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While most of his minor-chord dirges read like grave rubbings set to music, Smith still has the perfect voice to peel wallpaper, shatter a spider web and put the listener under his spell. Sounding like a teenage brooder with an overactive imagination rather than a middle-aged man whining about rheumatism, Smith still conveys youthful angst and torture artistry better than anyone.

Not only did the Cure perform several unreleased tracks from their long promised “Songs of a Lost World,” Smith opened and closed the 15-song main set with a pair of nihilistic musical bookends from that unreleased opus.

Kicking things off with the dreary damnation ditty “Alone,” Smith lamented the end of humanity, Earth’s fragile ecosystems and digital download sites such as Spotify. At least, I think that’s what Smith was bellyaching about from my first and only listen of the song. Just in time for graduation season, Smith delivers the dreary salutation, “This is the end of every song that we sing/The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears/Cold and afraid, the ghosts of all that we’ve been/We toast, with bitter dregs, to our emptiness.” Take that, Class of 2023.

Before driving the overly sensitive in the audience to drink hemlock, Smith returned to familiar territory with the poignant pop gem “Pictures of You.” Playing the tortured lover to the hilt, Smith was compelling as a heartbroken dreamer escaping in a fantasy world of his ex-lover's photographs, long before the days of sexting and social media. Smith fully embraced the lyrics as if he had unearthed some deep-hidden meaning that has been buried in them for years.

On the yet-to-be-released “A Fragile Thing,” Smith examines how delicate a romantic relationship can be. Surrounding by gurgling guitars and crashing drums, Smith gushes, “Every time you kiss me I could cry/Don’t tell how you miss me/I could die tomorrow of a broken heart.” While many of the new songs seemed to fit snugly with the Cure’s well-established, doom and gloom catalog, it was when the Cure delivered familiar, crowd-pleasing gems when the band truly shined.

Old brood eyes (aka Smith) proved that the Cure's biggest U.S. hit, "Lovesong," was no fluke and, after all these years, is still a great pop song.

Despite being called “And Nothing Is Forever,” this meandering new track sounded like it went on forever. Waving his arms like he was conducting the schmaltzy keyboards and synthesized strings as his back faced the audience, a Smith delivered a sappy ballad that was more tedious than tortured. Even sap-extraordinaire Diane Warren would think twice about attaching her name to such sentimental drivel.

After one forgivable misstep, the Cure bounced back in a big way with the heavy-duty rocker “Burn” from “The Crow” soundtrack. Playing a clarinet until he spat it out of his mouth and onto the floor, Smith sounded absolutely menacing singing about dark obsessions and burning desires as a claustrophobic mix of thunderous drumbeats and whiny guitar licks obliterated any lingering residue from the previous number.

While “Charlotte Sometimes” is a song that we want to hear every time the Cure comes around, the arrangement Sunday night sounded more cushiony and syrupy than the original and seemed to be at odds with Smith’s aching, quaking delivery.

Both sonically and visually, the Cure's first UK hit single, "A Forest," was the main set’s undisputed highlight. With the winning combination of Smith’s blood curdling yelps and Gallup’s galloping bass lines, this number, which was accompanied by striking visuals of flying through ominous trees, was dark and foreboding and truly hypnotic.

After another showstopper, “Shake Dog Shake” that shook the foundation, and doomed lovers ditty “From the Edge of the Deep Blue Sea,” in which Smith was his tortured best, the Cure ended the main set with another new one, “Endsong.”

While Smith sang about wandering in the dark and wondering how he got so old, there were many in the audience that have been with the Cure since the early days that were probably wondering the same thing about themselves. Then again, there were still plenty in the crowd that were half the singer’s age - or more - just discovering the magnitude and might of Smith’s classic brooders.

Opening the first encore with the fifth and final new song of the evening, “I Can Never Say Goodbye” was Smith’s most personal and poignant number of the evening. Inspired by the loss of his older brother Richard a few years back, a haunted, heartbroken and hostile Smith lashes out at the Grim Reaper with stinging bile (and a built-in Shakespeare reference) in the lines, “Something wicked this way comes/To steal away my brother’s life/Something wicked this way comes/I could never say goodbye.” Powerful stuff.

And this tone of overwhelming loss and inconsolable despair continued through the first encore with a trio of songs (“Plainsong,” “Prayer for Rain” and “Disintegration”) from 1989’s “Disintegration,” which Stan on "South Park" declared as the best album ever! I'm more a Cure's "Pornography" guy but who am I to argue with a fictional cartoon character?

The second encore was what most fans were waiting for all night, a rapid-fire barrage of the Cure’s most beloved and, dare I say, fun hits.

Opening with “Lullaby,” the Cure's creepy crawly crooner sang about being eaten by a giant spider on the silliest insect song this side of The Who's "Boris the Spider." Smith also showed off some not-so fancy footwork during “Six Different Ways” that made the audience collectively chuckle.

Giddy as a goth in a cadaver store, Smith really hit his stride with a series of fast-paced pop charmers that included “Friday I’m in Love,” “Close to Me,” “Why Can’t I Be You?” “In Between Days” and “Just Like Heaven,” with the audience singing along.

Ending with “Boys Don’t Cry,” Smith looked deeply touched and a little bit overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and admiration from the crowd.

After telling the audience that they were “(expletive) great” and that the Cure would see them again, a choked-up Smith walked from one end of the stage to the other, often with his heart on his chest, as he soaked it all in and retreated off the stage after grabbing a cuddly stuff animal from an admirer in the audience.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Review: Robert Smith and the Cure lifts spirits at Xfinity Center in Mansfield