Expect the Cure show to last longer than recovery from heartbreak

Hurricane season is upon us. Time to gather supplies and prepare to spend a long time indoors. The same may as well apply if you are planning to attend one of the Cure’s two shows this weekend at Blaisdell Arena.

In the ’80s alt-rockers’ only previous appearance in the isles, three years ago, they captivated a capacity crowd for 38 songs over more than three hours — about twice as long as most concerts go — including two encores totaling 13 songs and lasting nearly an hour (according to setlist.fm).

As the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s John Berger wrote in his review, the band “gave Hawaii fans their money’s worth. … (Fans) on the arena floor remained standing for the duration.”

Reviews of shows from their current tour indicate Honolulu fans can expect more of the same Saturday and Sunday nights. Scour the internet for a look at how their current tour — dubbed, simply enough, “The Cure Tour 2016” — is going, and the search results read like some kind of rambly-country-song-title/urban-pop-culture-legend mash-up:

>> “The Cure Played Four Encores Last Night and We Still Didn’t Want It to End”

>> “When The Sun Goes Down, The Cure Comes Out Firing”

>> “The Cure Gives Miami an Excuse to Wear Black in June”

>> “With Each Show, The Cure’s Setlist Is Getting More and More Insane”

What fans can expect at the Blaisdell is probably best reflected, though, by this one: “Rare Twin Cities show wowed diehards, wore out everyone else.”

The Cure (which turned down requests for an interview) is among the standard-setters of 1980s alternative rock music, rivaled only by similarly seminal acts such as the Smiths, New Order and Depeche Mode. Those groups and a handful of others helped college and alternative music go mainstream.

The band had only one top-10 pop hit in the U.S. — 1989’s wistful “Lovesong,” which was remade by 311 in 2004 for the Hawaii-based film “50 First Dates” — and not many more in their native England, but the Cure’s moody, atmospheric brand of rock set a template for the goth movement, a genre it remained tied to even as the band became known for upbeat fare such as “Just Like Heaven” and the downright bouncy “Friday I’m in Love.”

The emotional imprint can be heard plainly in many bands that have thrived since, among them My Chemical Romance and the Killers.

The Cure’s use of makeup can also be seen in contemporary acts, and though it dates from rockers before them such as David Bowie, for the Cure it was more than a phase, more integral to their image.

That the Cure — led throughout its four-decade existence by frontman Robert Smith — are selling out arenas with marathon shows 20 to 30 years after the peak of the band’s fame is impressive enough.

But Smith chooses to add a degree of difficulty.

These are no cookie-cutter shows. Take, for example, a recent three-night, sold-out stand at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Each show went 31 or 32 songs and more than three hours (with four encores each night), but only eight core songs were played in all three shows — no spoilers here, but you can imagine which they were — and overall the quartet played 61 different songs across those three shows.

With every member but one — longtime David Bowie guitarist Reeves Gabrels, the lone American — having spent at least 18 years playing with Smith, the band seems to have mastered the entire Cure oeuvre, with any and every selection ready to go on a night’s whim.

The whole tour — 33 shows in 26 cities so far — has been a living, breathing illustration of that, so Hawaii fans should expect the same. Those eight core songs will surely be played, but beyond that? It’s anyone’s guess.

The band has broken out songs on this tour that haven’t been played in years or even decades, including songs from the ’80s that had never been played live before — B-sides, soundtrack contributions, everything short of their take on “Over the Rainbow.”

They’ve even debuted two new songs: “Step Into the Light” and “It Can Never Be the Same.”

Everything is gloriously on the table this weekend. Anything can happen as Hurricane Cure hits Hawaii.