The Cure, Bestival Live 2011 (Sunday Best Recordings) **** (From York Press)

The Cure, Bestival Live 2011 (Sunday Best Recordings) ****

11:11am Friday 3rd February 2012 in CD reviews By Charles Hutchinson

AFTER seven years of pestering and an “unhealthy fascination” since the age of 15 with The Cure, Bestival founder Rob da Bank finally secured Robert Smith’s goth pandas for their sole festival appearance of last summer.

Now da Bank has released their epic two-and-a-half-hour set on his own label, and all for a good cause, the Isle Of White Youth Trust. Live albums from The Cure have been sporadic – Concert and Show are so old, your reviewer has them on cassette, and nothing since – and Bestival Live is effectively a Bestival Best Of, a very welcome career-spanning concert that finds Smith still playing the eternal love-struck, graveyard-fascinated teen.

Pretty much everything is here, right up to The Only One off 4.13 Dream, via the usual suspects (Just Like Heaven, Lullaby, The Lovecats et al) and a rare outing for Play For Today. The night ends with a change of name and lyric for Killing An Arab, now softened to Killing Another, a sign of these politically sensitive times.