Øya, Oslo review – Joyous festival with enough heart to bring even Robert Smith to tears

It was sold to private equity firm KKR in 2024, which also holds some unrelated investments in Israeli companies. In a country that prides itself on humanitarianism – in which corruption and scandal are vanishingly rare – this was a fairly sustained controversy that peaked last summer, with calls to boycott the festival. This year the mood has cooled somewhat, and the wealthy petro-state’s citizens seem content to fly Palestine flags.

For a festival often punctuated by storms, it’s apt that the line-up is stuffed full of moody, dramatic acts. On Wednesday night, The Cure, those emperors of goth and pop, headline the main stage. The Crawley group have an incomparable catalogue of hits to play with, and deliver a sprawling set that even sees Robert Smith shed a tear during a captivating rendition of “Just Like Heaven”.

Their set lasts two-and-a-half hours and spans more than four decades, including their early post-punk era, a stint as funereal doomsayers, and the synth-pop of their commercial peak. They save most of the bangers for the 10-song encore: “Lovesong”, “Lullaby”, “The Lovecats”, “Friday I’m in Love” and “Boys Don’t Cry” all ensue. Eschewing tight jeans these days for roomy combat trousers, Smith is leaning into his late sixties, but what remains constant is that voice: crystalline and pained and cracked only when he allows it.

Seldom have I seen him more joyous. Come Thursday evening, it is Nick Cave’s doom-laden sermons that bellow out across the fields, sending the normally polite crowd into a state of bedlam. Opener “Get Ready for Love“ gives way to a career-spanning set that veers from the chaotic, strangled guitar of “From Her to Eternity” to “The Mercy Seat”.

Alongside music steeped in biblical imagery, rainfall feels like an accompaniment – as if this besuited preacher had summoned the heavens himself. By turns apocalyptic and poignant, flowing as it is with meditations on grief, the set ends on “Into My Arms”, a song that targets the tear ducts with laser-guided precision. On the Circus stage, in a frustrating partial clash with Cave, Dev Hynes aka Blood Orange commands the space with the band’s nocturnal tangle of Prince-adjacent funk, saxophone and bruised falsetto.

A Norwegian warehouse is an incongruous setting for songs that feel more at home in the latter hours of a clammy afters, but somehow the music blooms. There’s a soporific quality – on tracks such as the sublime “You’re Not Good Enough” and “Charcoal Baby” – with synths gliding over honeyed vocals. The immaculate coda of “Uncle ACE” drifts over the crowd.