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The Cure review – an intimate, poignant show from a band more focused than they’ve been in years

Material from new album Songs of a Lost World fits perfectly amid two hours’ worth of back-catalogue hits, all performed with giddy intensity

Two hours into the Cure’s relatively intimate launch gig for new album Songs of a Lost World, Robert Smith begs the sound desk not to use the tape of thunder and rain that has been shaking the jaded grandeur of the Troxy while the band were offstage between encores. Photograph: Tom PallantIt’s this sort of intensity of performance that makes Songs of a Lost World fit so well with the giddiness of the following two hours of hits – especially the half of 1980’s Seventeen Seconds that gets played in its own encore. That the Cure can seamlessly journey from the pure pop of Friday I’m in Love and Inbetween Days to the anxious fizz of At Night, the beautiful dirge of Fascination Street and the palpitating menace of A Forest, and that it all feels so alive alongside the new album, suggests there is no sign of ossification as the band approach their half century: “We’re nearly out of time … but just for tonight,” says Smith.

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