The Cure goes big with greatest hits set for 40th anniversary gig — setlist, full audio, tons of video

Robert Smith led the current incarnation of alt-rock titans The Cure through a greatest-hits set tonight filled with big singles, fan favorites and a couple rarer cuts as he celebrated the band’s 40-year career with a huge outdoor festival in London’s Hyde Park.

The Cure topped a bill that included Interpol, Goldfrapp, Editors, Ride, Slowdive, The Twilight Sad and more, taking the stage before a huge crowd well before the sun went down, then delivering a 29-song set that hewed fairly close to the kinds of shows the band played on its most recent U.S. tour, in 2016.

The band opened and closed the main set with Disintegration’s “Plainsong” and the title track before returning for a 10-song encore that included its best-known pop hits followed by some of its earliest songs, including “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” and “Grinding Halt,” neither performed since 2011.

There were no guests — no former bandmates, as some fans had hoped to see — and the set, despite being a celebration of the band’s 40-year career, consisted almost entirely of music from the first 16 years of that period. Aside from 2004’s “End of the World,” the performance focused entirely on music released between 1978 and 1994 — and skipped crucial albums Faith and Pornography entirely.

And perhaps that’s because the band did mix it up, and served up a true top-to-bottom career retrospective, two weeks ago at the conclusion of the Smith-curated Meltdown festival.

Regardless, the most promising moment of The Cure’s Hyde Park set might have been Smith’s sign-off: “Thank you very much. See you again very soon. Thank you.”

Below, check out the setlist, plus full audio from the concert via @Snuffybear and a whole lot of video.

Setlist: The Cure, British Summer Time, Hyde Park, London, England, 7/7/18

1. “Plainsong”
2. “Pictures of You”
3. “High”
4. “A Night Like This”
5. “The Walk”
6. “End of the World”
7. “Lovesong”
8. “Push”
9. “In Between Days”
10. “Just Like Heaven”
11. “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep”
12. “Play For Today”
13. “A Forest”
14. “Shake Dog Shake”
15. “Burn”
16. “Fascination Street”
17. “Never Enough”
18. “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea”
19. “Disintegration”

Encore
20. “Lullaby”
21. “The Caterpillar”
22. “Friday I’m in Love”
23. “Close to Me”
24. “Why Can’t I Be You?”
25. “Boys Don’t Cry”
26. “Jumping Someone Else’s Train
27. “Grinding Halt”
28. “10:15 Saturday Night”
29. “Killing An Arab”

PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS

• You’ll hear nothing but The Cure on this weekend’s edition of Sirius XM’s ‘Dark Wave’
• The Cure closes Robert Smith’s Meltdown by going ‘there to here and back again’ — hear the full set
• Robert Smith to play Meltdown with ‘curious friends,’ says he’s working on new music
• The Cure to mark 40th anniversary with new documentary: ‘Robert himself will tell the story’
• The Cure to play giant 40th anniversary concert in London’s Hyde Park next year
• Tim Pope confirms work on ‘The Cure project,’ promises ‘bumper year for the 40th anniversary
• The absolute best of The Cure: All 225 songs ranked by Slicing Up Eyeballs’ readers