The Cure - Bestival Live 2011 Album Reviews & Song Lyrics

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The Cure Bestival Live 2011 Album Cover

The Cure "Bestival Live 2011" album

- Release date : December 2011 -

"Bestival Live 2011" is an album by the English rock band The Cure, released on December 6, 2011. It is the recording of The Cure's appearance at Britain's Bestival in September 2011 and is the band's first live album since 1993.

"Bestival Live 2011" album tracks and lyrics

"Bestival Live 2011" album reviews

From the early 80s it took them no time to hollow out the energy of punk into something bleak and beautiful – and like all great bands they quickly created their own universe. Once the listener-in-waiting gets past this set’s awful bootleg-like cover – it might be a charity release, benefitting the Isle of Wight Youth Trust, but nothing can excuse this lazy effort – the sound quality is wonderful, immediately putting aside any fears of bootleg quality presentation in that department.

Punk allowed anyone to be a frontman, and Smith lets his singing do the talking here. It is the Gothfather and company’s fifth live album, their first since 1993, and captures their current vitality as a live band. Their two-and-a-half hour sets are frequently described as ambitious, which implies they might struggle to meet the demands of such a duration. But few can forget the number of hits they’ve had – easily enough to fill a lengthy performance. Close to Me, The Lovecats and Boys Don’t Cry all feature on what might seem a marathon listen to the casual fan; but to the hardcore crowd, this stirs memories without anyone losing the way back to their tent.

The opener, Plainsong, confirms rumoured changes in The Cure’s line-up, with the return of Roger O’Donnell on keyboards. These are presented to the fore of the mix, offering a very different sound following six years of the band operating as a trio. The brooding magnificence of A Forest threatens to overshadow the first half of the set, but it’s neatly pruned, as tight and otherworldly as its studio version. And the song’s in good company as the band casts a luxuriously hypnotic spell on the senses, getting through more material on two discs than most bands do across a career. From the scratchy dark funk of Play for Today to the half-awake sensuality of The Only One from their last album, 2008’s 4:13 Dream, it’s effortless.

Observant fans will acknowledge the first airing of The Caterpillar since 1991, but this is primarily a celebratory set of greatest hits to appeal to casual and obsessive fans alike. It confirms The Cure as an ongoing, still-vibrant concern.

*** By Tom Hocknell, BBC Music ***

The Cure could be found in a mix of holding pattern and seemingly constant activity in 2011, with an irregular series of world-wide performances of the band's first three albums and a slew of guest appearances and one-offs by Robert Smith on his own and with other performers standing in for either new or reissued albums. But there was also a one-off headlining performance at the Bestival in the U.K. that summer, resulting in the band's first official live album since the Show and Paris releases of 1993. Feeling more like a souvenir than anything else, it's above all a portrait of a band that has the knack of handling a career-spanning catalog down cold, something with both positive and negative sides to it. On the one hand, besides a thankfully clear mix that feels like a brisk soundboard recording, there's the treat of hearing a then-unique quartet lineup of Smith, Simon Gallup, and Jason Cooper matched with the then-recently returned Roger O'Donnell adding keyboards for the first time in some years. If it's not quite Seventeen Seconds all over again, performances of "Play for Today" and the inevitable "A Forest" do happily nod in that direction. Smith himself still sounds in astonishingly well-preserved voice, only occasionally stepping aside from some high notes while sounding as moodily powerful as ever on guitar -- not to mention as half-understandable as ever on his occasional song introductions. On the other hand, Smith and company have been playing this kind of set for years upon years when it comes to general or festival audiences, emphasizing the big hits of the first 15 years of their career. Out of 32 songs, literally only three of them couldn't have appeared on either Show or Paris -- happily one of them being the underrated "The Hungry Ghost" from 4:13 Dream -- while the remainder of the selections leans much more toward the hits and singles than the album cuts, stalwarts like "Plainsong," "Push," and "Disintegration" aside. (Though the appearance of "The Caterpillar" is a fun surprise, having never been played for a full-on show by the band once since 1984.) Bestival Live 2011 is an understandably honest reflection of the Cure in the popular mind as their commercial high point recedes further into the past, but given Smith and the band's other contemporaneous activities, it's an incomplete portrait.

*** By Ned Raggett, All Music ***