The Cure release updated version of documentary ‘Play Out’
The Cure have released an upgraded and extended version of their 1991 reveal-all documentary, Play Out. To the delight of the band’s fans, all two hours have been uploaded to YouTube, with it a time capsule back to the time that the Crawley outfit were gearing up to release the album that broke them in America, Wish.
Directed by Peter Fowler, Play Out follows The Cure as they undertake a host of significant shows. At the start, frontman Robert Smith walks into a soundcheck at a relatively small-sized venue, and later in the film they debut a selection of what are now hailed as classic songs at intimate shows such as this. Elsewhere, they headline Wembley and perform on MTV Unplugged, setting the scene for the arrival of Wish. Notably, the expanded version goes much deeper into the band than the original.
The re-release of Play Out coincides with the 30th-anniversary reissue of Wish, which remains their most commercially successful album, boasting cuts such as ‘Friday I’m In Love’, ‘High’ and ‘A Letter to Elise’. The new version features 45 songs, and in addition to the original tracks, there are demos, four songs from the cassette Lost Wishes, unreleased numbers and more.
The Cure have made the headlines frequently as of late. During a concert in Assago, Italy, earlier this month, they debuted the new track ‘A Fragile Thing’, which is rumoured to feature on their upcoming 14th album.
“It’s very much on the darker side of the spectrum,” Smith said of the new record in a conversation with NME. “I lost my mother and my father and my brother recently, and obviously, it had an effect on me,” he said back in 2019. “It’s not relentlessly doom and gloom. It has soundscapes on it, like Disintegration, I suppose. I was trying to create a big palette, a big wash of sound.”
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