Bestival Live 2011
Kanisha Dezarn
The Cure are nearly three-and-a-half decades deep in the game and have never been shy about monetizing their seemingly boundless recorded output. So it's something of a surprise that Bestival 2011 is their first official live record since the double-shot of 1993's Paris and Show, which capitalized on Wish boosting the band to its commercial zenith. The Cure have kept busier than a band of its status has needed to since then, releasing four studio records, a second greatest hits collection, and an intimidating, comprehensive B-sides collection, while Robert Smith parlayed his godfather status into guest spots on Blink-182 and Crystal Castles singles. But these things are often as novel as their setlist, and Bestival's intentions could not be clearer, accounting for the Cure's existence between 1993 and 2011 with a grand total of 10 minutes of music.
Then again, in a setting such as this one, fans who paid a couple days' salary for festival tickets like to have their preconceptions confirmed. Since Paris and Show, that's a one-hot-album-every-18-year average-- and I say that aware that a lot of people don't even have an abnormally generous relationship with Bloodflowers like I do. But even if the Cure's discography is riddled with redundancies, the question becomes: Who is Bestival even for? Particularly if completists almost certainly own Show and Paris, and newcomers to the band can (and often do) start with Staring at the Sea?
Without a visual accompaniment, Bestival is best viewed as a testament to the Cure's longevity and stylistic breadth. But while the collection speaks highly of the Cure's professionalism, it never catches spark, save for a performance of "The Caterpillar", reportedly their first since 1984. And since each song sticks so closely to the script, there's never much development of an internal narrative to make this performance seem worthy of documentation, though you could let your ears go soft and see it as a sort of Benjamin Button effect where they scale from their most regal and sumptuous ("Plainsong", "Open") to the wiry punk of the Three Imaginary Boys cuts that close out the set.
At the very least, their professionalism extends to the actual recording-- the sound is crisp and clear, and even Smith's stage banter sounds remotely intelligible. His voice has aged astoundingly well, all the more impressive for how it maintains such a startling fidelity to its studio counterpart, no matter if he's straining desperately on the atomically negative "One Hundred Years" or purring the come-ons of "Lullaby". Yet that clinical treatment robs the Cure's more expansive numbers ("Disintegration", "Push") of atmosphere and oddly minimizes them in open space, Smith's passionate guitar work just sounding kinda weedy. And often the loudest element of the mix is this Tupperware-snap snare that haunts anyone who's been within earshot of a hi-fi Dave Matthews Band bootleg.
Not to mention the times when the professionalism works against the intent of the material. Even if there was always something arena-rock about "Shake Dog Shake", it's rendered toothless when stripped of the circumstantial psychosis from The Top's sessions, and while they can't not play "Boys Don't Cry", it's performed at a flat-footed "we're gettin' too old for this shit" pace. Meanwhile, sticking "The End of the World" and "The Only One" amongst "A Night Like This" and "Lovesong" as if they're every bit as part of the firmament is surely a noble attempt at revisionist history.
But man, if you really want revisionist history, get to the end of this thing. Now, especially as it comes at the tail end of a two-hour peformance, the spirited, charged-up instrumental passages of this track are inspiring. But then Smith gets to the chorus and yelps, "I am the stranger... KILLING ANOTHER." I thought my promo copy had a typo, or it was a situation similar to when you could find copies of In Utero in retail stores with "Waif Me". "Killing an Arab" was misinterpreted by the same people Smith lashed out against on Cure's very embarrassing political rant "Us or Them" as being racially insensitive post-9/11, but it's just profoundly depressing to hear the song rendered all but completely meaningless when the mass setting should make it all the more resonant.
Which is really the dynamic that's confusing about Bestival-- it's easy to enough to understand the thrill of hearing "Friday I'm in Love" or "Just Like Heaven" amidst tens of thousands, but at this point, the Cure feel like less of a band than a traveling museum or theme park celebrating their past with the occasional new exhibit or ride to stoke interest. In other words, a completely user-driven experience en masse: You want to remember them as minimalist, ghostly post-punkers? They're touring Seventeen Seconds and Faith in the "Don't Look Back" format. If you prefer your mopes to be more drawn-out and reverberant, there's the Trilogy DVD where they play Pornography, Disintegration, and Bloodflowers in their exact order, exactly as they're played on record (its replay value is exactly what you'd expect). As for Bestival? It's what I suppose is a great reminder about the vastness of the Cure's actual catalog and their real-time vitality as a band as opposed to merely their influence, but even two hours of their best stuff in this format feels less rewarding than spending 20 minutes cobbling together your own Spotify playlist. After all, the corollary to the Cure-as-a-business is that the customer's always right.
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My set from Bestival 2014 on the Aperol Spritz stage with the Reach Up crew! Plenty of bangers and cheese in here!I'm open to doing this kind of thing live more often - hit up my agent reb...@earth-agency.com for bookings
The Cure of 2011 are a strange old entity. Creatively, Robert Smith and his assorted company seem to have luxuriated into the steady decline of releasing one new album of decent-ish quality every four years. As a live prospect the band are quite something to behold, providing you can get your hands on a ticket to see them.
The band headlined the Isle Of Wight-based festival in September, playing a 32-song, two-and-a-half-hour set and have now announced that they will release a recording of the whole gig in a 2CD package on December 5.
All profits from sales of the live album will be donated to the Isle Of Wight Youth Trust, a charitable, independent and professional organisation which offers counselling, advice, information and support services to young people aged 25 and under on the Isle of Wight.
The announcement of the release of the complete set from Bestival 2011 came to many as a surprise. Having just played 2 shows in Sydney performing their first 3 albums completely, one would have guessed the recording of those 'Reflection' gigs were the next The Cure release (hopefully in the new year), but far from it. Robert Smith enjoyed the one-off gig on the Isle of Wight so much, he decided to release the whole set as a new live-album.
And that is a "premiere" in more than 30 years of The Cure's history, as they never released a complete recording from just one show in its entirety on CD. The concert saw the welcome return of Roger O'Donnell on keyboards and for the first time in ages, just Robert on guitars with no second guitarist in sight. What a relief when Roger played the first notes of 'Plainsong', the perfect start to a 2 1/2 hour Cure gig.
Set-wise we are in for a greatest hits selection, quite appropriate for such a big and mixed festival, but as always, Robert likes to include some album tracks such as live favourites 'Push' or '100 Years'. Due to the band structure, even some of the hits like 'Just Like Heaven' sound a bit different but mostly these arrangements work really well, giving some more breathing space to the audience, instead of drowning them in massive guitar walls. 'The End Of The World' has never sounded better, the 2 songs from '4:13 Dream' stay rather weak though and don't improve.
For the encores, the usual pop-galore in the first and the trip back to the very early days in the second, are quite what can be expected. Luckily for the first time in more than 25 years they pull 'The Caterpillar' out of their back-catalogue and the rendition is a welcome addition to the usual songs as are 'Grinding Halt' and 'Jumping Someone Else's Train' before a high energetic 'Killing Another (An Arab)' finishes off the show.
A welcome addition to a fan's collection, surely not the most innovative set the band ever played, but you hear they must have enjoyed it a lot throughout the entire album. Unlike in the past ('Show') no heavy production but basically a straight-into-the-face live recording makes you feel like you've been there. This 4-piece lineup, with Roger being back, one can only hope, is the future for the band, as nearly all vintage songs regain a lot of freshness that way.
Picture the scene. It's Saturday night and Bestival, the festival season's final fling, is in full, fancy-dress, face-painted, cider-swilling swing. As Doves finish their majestic set and the sun sets over the leafy Isle of Wight country park, Rob da Bank, Bestival's founding father, appears on stage for a brief crowd-rousing DJ set. The opening beats of Faithless' "Insomnia" kick in and... six ballet dancers from the English National Ballet leap and pirouette out on to the main stage. A festival-induced hallucination? Strangely not: this weekend, the troupe's finest classical stars will be bringing ballet to the masses in the fields, dancing to floor-fillers from Basement Jaxx to Michael Jackson, inspired by this year's outer space theme.
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