CLEVELAND, Ohio – Justin Timberlake has had an exciting couple of weeks.

His “Forget Tomorrow Tour” has been on the road since April and unfortunately for Timberlake, in June he was on the road and reportedly behind the wheel after drinking. That earned himself a DWI, a celebrity mugshot and a meteoric rise to the top of the meme heap along with social-media mentions as plenty of folks used his poor judgement as easy comedy fodder.

But a little DWI isn’t going to derail the JT Express, and the singer-actor was quickly back on the road, presumably in the back of a very nice bus. And, Sunday night at Rocket Mortage FieldHouse, the 43-year-old veteran pop star wowed and charmed a primed and pumped and seemingly sold-out crowd for two hours with a mix of past hits and two-thirds of his solid new album “Everything I Thought I Was,” released in March.

Nearly 30 years into his career (yep, NSYNC formed in 1995), Timberlake knows how to charm a crowd, particularly when that crowd is mostly filled with women who, at some point in their youth, likely had pictures of him and his former boy bandmates on their bedroom walls.

Timberlake also knows how to put on a show. By today’s arena pop-star standards, the staging wasn’t very elaborate; a massive LED screen as a backdrop that showed abstract moving images or JT himself visually punctuating a song.

The elaborate part was the giant rectangular block LED screen and eventually stage that moved back and forth, up and down and hither and yon as Timberlake and his troupe of five limber dancers and 11 musicians, a.k.a The Tennessee Kids, performed in front of and at times underneath the massive stage prop. Beyond “blocky,” the visual energy and motion came from Timberlake and the smiling dancers, augmented by the three background singers, four horn players and the guitarist, who all got moments at the front of the stage.

Timberlake, wearing black pants, white shirt and dark jacket, and the Tennesee Kids, also clad in black, set the tone early by opening with the new song and single “No Angels,” one of the many updated disco-funk dance tunes on the album and in the setlist. But rather than stick to the taut, relatively sparse arrangement from the album, Timberlake and the band made sure everyone knew this was a real, live band, augmenting the basic track’s sound with cool horn lines.

Older hits also got the live treatment, the thumping “LoveStoned” and “My Love” were fleshed out with ornate Prince-esque turnarounds and extra grooves for choreography, all topped with Timberlake calling out stabs and hits to the band (“hit me two times!”) with James-Brown-inspired aplomb.

Timberlake is also adept at crowd work, reading signs, displaying and then getting down on the stage floor to sign a homemade jacket for a very excited fan, having the entire arena wish “Sue” a happy birthday and making an 8-year-old boy attending his first concert with his mom (according to the sign she was holding) feel special by asking everyone to cheer him on and giving mom a playful warning, “Hey mom, you know about the profanity in some of this music, right?” he playfully asked.

Focusing on the new record was a bit of a double-edged sword. Musically, the songs fit just fine with the past hits, but there were times when it was clear many in the packed audience hadn’t yet to absorb all the new material. The early trio of new tunes; the ballad “Technicolor,” the trap-soul grooving “Sanctified,” with its rock guitar-laden chorus and the old-school, bass-heavy disco of “Infinity Sex” didn’t exactly send fans on a beer or potty run. But during the sequence, the crowd was doing more watching of the always-moving JT than actively participating as they did during their favorites.

“FutureSex/LoveSound” broke the spell with Timberlake suggestively working a microphone stand with a light at the tip while the big floating block displayed a pair of faceless CGI lovers melting into each other while mimicking scenes from the Kama Sutra.

Another double shot of new songs, the funky “Imagination” with some added love for the horn section and the ballad “Drown” cooled the crowd again, but “Cry Me A River” put them back in Timberlake’s hands singing along and as the big box slowly tilted precariously above Timberlake and the guitarist as he soloed.

There was more classic arena-concert crowd work as Timberlake repeatedly praised his “day one NSYNC” fans, welcomed the “rookies” and marveled at his soon-to-be 30th anniversary in show biz. He also pitted the left side of the crowd against the right side against the middle to the chant lyrics of the African-percussion imbued “Let The Groove Get In” while providing another showcase for the horn section.

At the very back of the floor of the arena was a small B-Stage surrounded with roped-in VIPs (which translates to “we paid a pile of money to be in the back of the room”). Timberlake adroitly used the new tune “Play” to walk down the aisle, slapping hands, taking a few quick selfies and singing directly into fans’ phones as much of the band followed him in choreographed lockstep.

The B-stage gave fans the most old and slower songs, which they appreciated. The slinky groove of “Suit and Tie” got a cool start-stop arrangement, the semi-acoustic “Say Something,” the only song performed from his underwhelming “Man of the Woods” album. Timberlake worked his falsetto on “Pusher Lover Girl” and the ’80s-infused ballad “End of Time.” The unplugged “Selfish” and “What Comes Around…Goes Around” were singalongs.

Timberlake made his way back to the main stage on the opposite aisles and wound down the show with more club jams. He encouraged the crowd to sing the hook of “Can’t Stop The Feeling” from the “Trolls” movie, played a few bars of Chic’s classic “Good Times” (revealing some of the musical DNA of “Rock Your Body”) and followed that with “SexyBack,” sending the crowd into a dance frenzy.

Timberlake and the Tennessee Kids ended the show with “Mirrors” from the “20/20 Experience,” turned epic when Timberlake appeared on top of the floating box, which then moved to the front of the stage and tilted him down directly at the folks in the front rows who were singing the song’s big chorus back at him.

Before Timberlake took the stage, DJ Andrew Hypes did his job and lived up to his name by deftly ramping the early crowd’s excitement with a mix of old NSYNC, Timberlake tunes alongside hip hop, pop classics, Journey and Earth, Wind and Fire and several songs aimed at the “Ladieeeees!!” including the Spice Girls, Gwen Stefani and Whitney Houston.