When tickets for the Cure’s North American tour went on sale in March, the front man Robert Smith expressed his frustration with the apparatus that dictates how fans see the group live. In the months since, the singer has pushed to make more concert seats available, and affordable. Such a response is in line with the credo of a band that helped create the goth-rock subculture and define post-punk—and of an artist who has been tormented by the idea of becoming a machine or a business. As the Cure prepares to release its first album in nearly fifteen years, “Songs of a Lost World,” it takes over Madison Square Garden from June 20-22—with an epic set that sprinkles new, existential cuts into its famously gloomy, classic catalogue.