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.
