The Cure - Bestival 2011 review

'The delay in turning this from a club show to a festival set is worth it for the encore alone'

Daniel Fahey - 11 September 2011

9/10

Ironically for a band fronted by such an iconic face - the Revlon-eyed, raspberry lipped Robert Smith - The Cure show just how many sides to theirs they have this evening in a mammoth two-and-a-half-hour headline bonanza.

For the casual Cure fan, it’s a difficult first half. ‘Just Like Heaven’ and ‘The Only One’ are among the only ‘big’ numbers as the group clearly revel in sliding into their lesser-known fodder.

The delay in changing this from club show into festival set has many shuffling off for harder, heavily, happier fare in the smaller tents and crannies of Robin Hill Park, but those that remain see the group mould this into one of the shows of the summer.

Changing axes to a specially-painted Bestival one that Smith says “weighs more than a fucking car”, the group land more hits than Mike Tyson with ‘Love Cats’, ‘The Caterpillar’, ‘Close To Me’ and the art goth kick of ‘Hot Hot Hot!!!” sending them into their stride.

Their poppier moments like ‘Let’s Go To Bed’ and ‘Jumping Someone Else's Train’ groove as pockets of fans cuddle, sprouting the lyrics back to their hero, and even a pedestrian ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ doesn’t deter the trajectory of the show as it explodes into a sprite ‘Killing An Arab’ concluding what has to go down as one of the finest hours of encore ever.

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