The Cure have kicked off their first tour since their run of Summer Festival shows in 2019 with a 25-song set at the Arēna Rīga in Riga, Latvia. The band played two new songs, Alone and Endsong, which topped and tailed a main set stuffed with Cure classics. Fan-shot videos of both performances are below.
The performance was the band's first show in Latvia, and their first with guitarist/keyboard player Perry Bamonte since 2004, who joined the band in 1990 but left in 2005. His reappearance – joining Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, Jason Cooper, Roger O'Donnell and Reeves Gabriel onstage – marks the band's return to a six-piece lineup for the first time in 30 years.
The band embarked on the run of 44 shows without conforming the arrival of a new album, despite frontman Robert Smith telling the NME in May, “I get fed up of saying this now! We will be playing from October and the new album will be out before then."
It's not the first time fans of The Cure – who haven't released a studio album since 2008's 4:13 Dream – have been promised that new material is imminent, and it's been more a year since Smith revealed that two albums were almost ready to go.
"Probably in about six weeks time I'll be able to say when everything's coming out and what we're doing next year and everything," Smith told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 in June 2021. "So we were doing two albums and one of them's very, very doom and gloom and the other one isn't. And they're both very close to being done. I just have to decide who's going to mix them. That's really all I've got left to do."
In August 2019, Smith revealed that the band hoped to finish recording an album that year, and described the sound as “not relentlessly doom and gloom. It has soundscapes on it, like Disintegration."
The previous December, Smith promised, "we’re going in about six weeks time to finish off what will be our first album for more than a decade."
The Cure's Lost World Tour resumes in Helsinki on Saturday evening.
The Cure: Arēna Rīga, Riga, Latvia setlist
Alone
Pictures of You
Closedown
A Night Like This
Lovesong
Trust
Burn
Fascination Street
Push
In Between Days
Play for Today
A Forest
Want
Shake Dog Shake
39
From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
Endsong
Encore
Plainsong
Disintegration
Second Encore
Lullaby
Close to Me
The Walk
Friday I'm in Love
Just Like Heaven
Boys Don't Cry
The Cure: Lost World Tour - European dates
Oct 08: Helsinki Hartwall Arena, Finland
Oct 10: Helsinki Avicii Arena, Sweden
Oct 12: Oslo Spektrum, Norway
Oct 13: Gothenburg Scandinavium, Sweden
Oct 14: Copenhagen Royal Arena, Denmark
Oct 16: Hamburg Barclaycard Arena, Germany
Oct 17: Leipzig Quarterback Immobilien Arena, Germany
Oct 18: Berlin Mercedes-Benz Arena, Germany
Oct 20: Krakow Tauron Arena, Poland
Oct 21: Lodz Atlas Arena, Poland
Oct 23: Vienna Marx Halle, Austria
Oct 24: Prague O2 Arena, Czech Republic
Oct 26: Budapest Arena, Hungary
Oct 27: Zagreb Arena, Croatia
Oct 29: Munich Olympiahalle, Germany
Oct 31: Bologna UniPoland Arena, Italy
Nov 01: Florence Mandela Forum, Italy
Nov 03: Padova Kioene Arena, Italy
Nov 04: Milan Forum, Italy
Nov 06: Geneva Arena, Switzerland
Nov 07: Lyon Halle Tony Garnier, France
Nov 08: Montpellier Sud De Francence Arena, France
Nov 11: Madrid Wizink Center, Spain
Nov 13: Toulouse Zenith, France
Nov 14: Bordeaux Arkea Arena, France
Nov 15: Nantes Zenith, France
Nov 17: Francenkfurt Festhalle, Germany
Nov 18: Strasbourg Zenith, France
Nov 19: Basel St Jakobshalle, Switzerland
Non 21: Stuttggart Hans-Martin-Schleyer-Halle, Germany
Nov 22: Cologne Lanxess Arena, Germany
Nov 23: Antwerp Sportpaleis, Belgium
Nov 25: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, The Netherlands
Nov 27: Lievin Stade, France
Nov 28: Paris Accor Arena, France
Dec 01: Dublin 3Arena, Ireland
Dec 02: Belfast SSE, UK
Dec 04: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
Dec 06: Leeds First Arena Direct, UK
Dec 07: Birmingham UtilItaly Arena, UK
Dec 08: Cardiff Motorpoint Arena, UK
Dec 11: London SSE Arena, UK
