The Cure deliver a gorgeous concert on the first of three shows at the Hollywood Bowl

In the end, Robert Smith didn’t really seem like he was ready to leave the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, where he and the Cure wrapped up nearly three hours on stage Tuesday with a soaring run through “Boys Don’t Cry.”

He walked to stage right and bowed slightly to the fans, and then did the same on the left. He walked into the wings, but the cheers and applause brought him back for a moment, hesitating still.

This isn’t unusual for Smith and the Cure, of course. At Coachella one year, the Cure famously blasted past the festival curfew, ignoring orders to stop until the festival organizers cut power to the stage and turned the field lights on. Smith and the band played on, fans pushing forward to hear and help them sing another three unplugged songs including “Boys Don’t Cry.”

So yeah, there’s a bond here between Smith, who co-founded the Cure in 1978, and the fans who’ve adored the emotionally deep, soaring and beautiful songs he’s written ever since. (That he spoke out against Ticketmaster and scalpers over their practices, and fought to keep tickets affordable for the tour only endeared him more.)

Touring behind – actually, in front – of “Songs of a Lost World,” an album that still has no release date? No problem. The six new songs in the set got almost the response that much better-known tunes received.

Stay ’til the end? Of course, they did.

Gray skies and low clouds over the Bowl on Tuesday matched the rumble of thunder and clatter of rain piped over the PA as fans waited for the Cure to arrive almost seven years to the day since its last three-night run at the historic venue.

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“Alone,” one of six not-yet-released new songs in the show, opened the night with a typical-for-the-Cure long instrumental intro before Smith, handed a bouquet of roses by a fan as he arrived on stage, started to sing.

“Hello, again,” he said at its close. “We came back!” a fan deep in the Bowl shouted back to him.

“Pictures Of You,” a slow and lovely tune from 1989’s “Disintegration” album followed, and the familiar pace of Cure in concert slipped into place.

The first half of most shows builds slowly, developing a shared mood between musicians and the masses through longer songs that burn slowly. “A Night Like This,” one of five tracks off 1985’s “The Head on the Door,” brought big, booming rock to the stage, Smith’s plaintive tenor soaring atop it. “Lovesong” followed with its gentle promise to always love you.

New songs such as “And Nothing Is Forever” fit neatly amid the older ones, sounding fresh yet familiar. “A Fragile Thing,” for instance, opened “Every time you kiss me, I could cry she said,” as Robert Smith a sentiment as you will find. “Another Happy Birthday,” which made its live world premiere on Tuesday, heard him singing, “There’s no one there to hold, I’m coming apart,” in a song that seemed to feature a heartbroken singer on a lost, possibly dead, lover’s birthday.

In interviews, Smith has said “Songs of a Lost World,” the band’s first new record in 15 years, is the “doomiest” Cure album ever, which is really saying something for the oft-gloomy outfit. (A second album, also finished, will be much poppier and upbeat, he’s promised.)

That melancholy lifted with bigger, bolder rock numbers (“Burn,” “Primary,” and especially “Shake Dog Shake”) and slower, wistful plaints (“Charlotte Sometimes,” “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea”).

The first encore served up more that mix, opening with something very sad – “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” a new song written after his older brother Richard died – and building to the encore-closing “At Night” and “A Forest,” a pair of songs off 1980’s “Seventeen Seconds,” the second Cure release and the oldest material in the set on Tuesday.

The second encore delivered catharsis in the form of the poppiest, most joyful songs in the set. If you survived the sorrow of some of those earlier moments, this was your reward. “Lullaby” opened the final run of nine songs, with “The Walk” soon following, both of those performed beautifully by Smith and the band.

While Smith is the only original member of the Cure in the group, nearly all of the others have played in the Cure for decades, with bassist Simon Gallup first joining in 1979, and keyboardist Roger O’Donnell and guitarist Perry Bamonte part of the band at times for more than three decades.

Now racing the clock, fan favorites came in a rush: “Friday I’m In Love” a single that even a casual fan knows by heart, two songs later, “Close To You,” then “In Between Days” and “Just Like Heaven.”

“Boys Don’t Cry” finished just a couple of minutes before the Bowl’s 11 p.m. curfew, and this time, that was it. Not, of course, that Smith or the fans would have minded one bit if it wasn’t.