Treatments in Florence between classics and rarities: what to expect on the lineup
The countdown is increasingly tight and it’s almost time for the Cure to return to Italy. After inaugurating their summer tour with two concerts that have already reserved several surprises for fans, the band led by Robert Smith is preparing to take the stage at Florence Rocks for what represents the first Italian passage since 2022. The performances at Primavera Sound in Barcelona and at the North Festival in Maia showed a lineup eager to look forward without giving up its history, alternating the songs of “Songs of a lost world” (here is our review) to the great classics who have spanned almost fifty years of career. For the Italian public the appointment is scheduled for Sunday 14 June at the Visarno Arena and it will therefore be an opportunity to rediscover one of the most influential bands in British music and, at the same time, to closely observe a new creative phase that seems to be already projected towards the future.
The Cure’s return to tour
For The Cure this new tour represents much more than just a series of concerts. In 2024 the band released “Songs of a lost world”, fourteenth studio album arrived many years after the previous recording work and hailed as one of the most important events of their recent career. For the release of the project, Robert Smith and his companions chose a particular formula to present it live, organizing only one special evening at the Troxy in London in front of a small audience (here is our story from London). On that occasion the group dedicated an entire set to the new album before immersing themselves in a second part built on the great classics of their repertoire.
The 2026 summer tour therefore marks the Cure’s true return to a wider audience and represents the first opportunity to listen to both the new songs from “Songs of a lost world” and the songs that made the band one of the most loved in the history of rock in the same concert. It is also a particularly awaited return in our country, where the group had been absent for four years and where it continues to enjoy a transversal following that unites different generations of listeners.
Together with Smith, he is in this new concert series a lineup that over the years has become one of the most solid in the band’s history. On stage there are bassist Simon Gallup, a fundamental presence in the sound identity of the Cure since the 1980s, drummer Jason Cooper, who joined the group in 1995, keyboardist Roger O’Donnell and guitarist Reeves Gabrels, former collaborator of David Bowie and a stable member of the group since 2012. During the concert at Primavera Sound, they were also reunited Eden Gallup, son of Simontaking the place vacated by the late Perry Bamonte, the band’s guitarist and keyboardist, who passed away last December at the age of 65 after a brief illness.
What to expect from the Cure in Florence: the possible lineup
Try to predicting a Cure lineup is never easy and the first two concerts of the tour clearly demonstrated this. At both Primavera Sound and North Festival, Robert Smith and co maintained a very similar basic structurebut they also included several variations that they transformed every evening in a unique event. In Barcelona the group brought back “2 Late”, absent live since 2019, together with “Wrong Number”, “alt.end” and “Mint Car”. A few days later in Portugal, the band further surprised the audience by dedicating a period of the show to its second album “Seventeen Seconds” from 1980marked by the return of “Treasure” and “In Your House,” performed for the first time since 2013 and 2011 respectively.
However, if there is one certainty, it is that some of the most representative songs of the Cure’s career seem destined to occupy a central role in Florence too. In the first two dates, always opened by the dark and fascinating atmosphere of the main single from the latest album, “Alone”, there were never any shortages of “Pictures of You”, “High”, “A Night Like This”, “Lovesong”, “Burn”, “Fascination Street”, “In Between Days”, “Just Like Heaven”, “From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea” and “Endsong”, confirming the strong link between the band’s new course and its past. The encores included unmissable classics such as “Lullaby”, “The Lovecats”, “Friday I’m In Love”, “Close To Me”, “Why Can’t I Be You?” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” songs that alone tell much of the group’s history.
It remains to be seen what surprises Smith will decide to reserve for the Italian public. The recent revivals of “Mint Car”, “Treasure”, “Want”, “In Your House”, “M”, “2 Late” and “Wrong Number” demonstrate that The Cure’s repertoire is more open than ever to sudden deviations and that every concert can turn into a special occasion to rediscover songs that have long been away from the setlists. It is precisely this unpredictability that makes the Florence event particularly interesting.
The collaboration with Olivia Rodrigo and the wait for a new album
As the European tour gets underwayattention around the Cure continues to be fueled by news record companies. Just today, June 12th, Olivia Rodrigo released the new album “You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love”, which also contains “What’s Wrong With Me”, the song created together with Robert Smith. The collaboration was previewed live during the singer’s surprise set at Primavera Sound, when the two artists shared the stage presenting the song in front of the audience of the Spanish festival.
At the same time, the anticipation for the band’s future also grows. In recent days Smith has in fact revealed that the The Cure’s next recording project is already completed and ready to be delivered to the label. The singer explained that during the sessions following “Songs of a lost world” it was recorded enough material for multiple discs and that the work destined to be released first will be even darker and more introspective than the previous album. According to the musician, it will be a project ideally linked to the 2022 album, but developed from a different perspective.
During an interview granted yesterday 8 June to BBC 6 Music, Smith once again revealed that the band’s next two albums, which have been talked about for some time, are already “finished”, while a third album with a more “pop” character is also in the works. The project, already quietly announced in the group’s official biography last October, includes a 13-song album and will be one of three upcoming works. “We recorded enough material for three albums,” said the Cure frontman: “So the second one is finished and ready to be delivered to Universal“. Speaking about the album intended to be “poppier” than the others, Smith said he thinks some might interpret it as the result of his recent collaboration with Olivia Rodrigo. He explained: “The third album is strange, actually. Now that I’m doing these things, people think, ‘Ah, it’s because he worked with Olivia.’ Because the third album is really very sunny. It’s very pop. However, it cannot be compared from a melodic point of view to what Olivia does, but It’s my idea of Cure pop. It’s probably 20 BPM slower than anything she does, but compared to what we’ve done in the last couple of years it’s really energetic. It pushes a lot.” However, the first album destined to see the light, will not have the same positive tone. “What comes out first, if anything, is even darker than ‘Songs of a lost world’” Smith pointed out: “Cupissimo is a horrible word to use, but it’s pretty dark. It is connected to ‘Songs of a lost world’, but approaches things from a different perspective.”
