Primavera Sound, Barcelona Parc del Forum

Primavera Sound 2010

May 27-29, 2010

Primavera Sound has a secret. Ostensibly it’s one of dozens of indistinguishable European festivals, easily filed away with Sonar and Benicassim somewhere close to the Mediterranean. If you’re slightly more attentive it’s a Spanish uncle to ATP that’s booked increasingly populist headliners in recent years. Whisper it: it’s the best festival in the world.

It takes place in a glorified concrete car park decorated with what look like brash public art installations: massive solar panel shards and an odd roof-not-roof over the Pitchfork stage. Violently steep man-made auditoriums house the huge Ray-Ban stage and its smaller ATP-sponsored equivalent. A problematic drinks token system means you need to plan out your night’s intake hours in advance. There are more people and more sponsors every year. And The Charlatans are playing.

But there’s a lot to love as well. You can see the glistening Mediterranean from most of the site. Everything runs to time. Crowds are relaxed and would rather spread out and dance than moronically push towards the front. There’s no camping. Everything on the bigger stages sounds marvellous. You can get change for your high denomination notes at the fag machines from friendly people employed just to wander around with wads of €5s. You don’t have to watch The Charlatans if you don’t want to. Crucially, going to Primavera as a foreigner always means going to Barcelona with your friends. It’s won before it’s even started.

Thursday

Tel Aviv’s Monotonix play an unbelievable garage punk set in the crowd in front of the Vice stage. The music’s unremarkable but it ends with singer Ami Shalev hung upside down over an elevated seating section barrier. Drummer Haggai Fershtman squeezes between uncomfortable-looking seated patrons to play what’s left of his kit after it’s been dutifully passed to him through the crowd. It’s the arse-kicking start the day needs.

There’s a huge crowd fanned out in front of the Ray Ban stage for the xx, who I’ve not seen since an introverted performance last summer when Baria Qureshi was still in the band. They’ve loosened up. Romy Madley Croft suddenly looks a bona fide frontwoman with expressive head twitches accompanying every line. Oliver Sim is beguiling as he croons ‘Fantasy’ from atop a monitor, swaying like a goth scarecrow. Parts of the crowd look on the verge of moshing to ‘VCR’ and massively wrong stadium handclaps accompany ‘Heart Skipped A Beat’. These quiet love-bitten tunes have improbably become mass singalong “our songs”. Their creators have risen to the challenge and own the stage completely.

Pavement do the hits. Or so I’m told. I watch Mission Of Burma get the reunion thing all wrong on the Vice stage, playing more from their second post-2002 spell of activity than their 80s glory years. It’s wrong because their recent material sounds just as vital and weirdly brilliant as ever, raucous post-punk with brain and balls. The repetitive squall of unreleased new song ‘This Is Hi-Fi’ matches setlist companions ‘This Is Not A Photograph’ and Vs-era rarity ‘Nu Disco’ for cerebral bluster. Everyone goes mental for ‘That’s When I Reach For My Revolver’. It’s all over far too quickly.

I am drunk by now, but no amount of alcohol will ever make Fuck Buttons sound good to me. Their audience seems receptive to the gauche waves of cyclic noise, while I sit on some Astroturf to hear and take part in several conversations about how wonderful everything is here. No-one says they’re looking forward to The Charlatans.

Friday

The New Pornographers’ power pop deserves sunshine. It’s deeply unfair that they tear through a fantastically tuneful set in uncharacteristically overcast murk. They’re followed by Spoon, the world’s best 6/10 band. They do their thing well – clipped, clever straightforward rock. It’s a stately performance, Britt Daniel’s voice is raggedly superb, drums sound impeccable. There’s a little too much time spent getting lost in instrumental passages, crowd attention inevitably waning as they groove into another chugathon breakdown.

Wire are another band blithely disregarding the rules about reunions. There’s very little in their set for the Pink Flag fanboy, but LOADS if you’re in love with 2008’s Object 47. No easy answers, no Greatest Hits, no going through the motions. Well done, Wire. They’re unexpectedly tuneful right up to their encore, a frantic take on Pink Flag’s ‘12XU’ that sounds closer to Minor Threat’s screamed hardcore version than their own original.

When bands go on about how great this crowd is, Right Here Tonight, it usually feels forced. Japandroids harness the almost dangerous levels of goodwill that greet them by talking about how annihilated they got last night watching Pavement, how they had their “best fuckin’ night for ages”. Everybody cheers, everybody understands. They play their fuzz-baked hits with reckless vigour, completely compelling to watch despite being a straight drums n guitar duo. Their songs about kissing and fucking are as violently exciting as those things at their most intense.

Wilco do a faithful run through their post alt country catalogue. ‘Misunderstood’ gets a gloriously extended “nothing” section at the end, some Canadians near me hug and sing along to ‘Heavy Metal Drummer’. Pixies play the same songs they’ve been playing since 2004 with the same levels of proficiency and slight detachment. They’re fine, Barcelona gets what it wants (‘Debaser’, ‘Where Is My Mind’, ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’) but how much longer can their touring jukebox sham continue? Barry Hogan spins off-kilter indie hits on the ATP stage (who knew Catalunya was so fond of the Super Furry Animals’ ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’?) then suddenly it’s 5am and Diplo is clattering vicious bangers into each other at speed in front of a sweaty saucer-eyed crowd.

Saturday

The Slits are basically a competent reggae band these days which isn’t much to write home about, but a pleasant change of pace from the rest of the line-up and when feeling frazzled from the night before. Ari Up rubs people up the wrong way by shaking her huge dreadlocks and with her between-song chat – Rasta truisms and the news that “bass is good for your punani”.

I give The Charlatans a miss.

In an unexpected turn of events Polvo perform my favourite set of the festival. Theirs is supremely geeky music, mathy post-hardcore filled with show-off drum fills, time signature tricks and atonal misdirects from three guitarists doing massively different jobs. Their wispy vocals sit uncomfortably over such accomplished music, as on record. But ‘Right The Relation’, the taut first song from last year’s In Prism sounds utterly majestic, Exploded Drawing’s ‘Fast Canoe’ bizarrely moving. I have a fantastic view of the band and the sun setting over a cobalt sea in the background. Context context context.

Another wonderful quirk of Primavera is the enthusiasm you encounter for unlikely bands. Built To Spill draw a mammoth crew of dedicated fans to the ATP stage, and after years of watching them in bored English crowds it’s a blast seeing them get the reaction they deserve. Doug Martsch’s weird scrawny voice floats above his band’s colourful classic rock workouts, in a set heavy on There’s Nothing Wrong With Love material. Sound is clearly problematic for the band (someone needs to tell Martsch that no crowd wants to hear “more kick drum, less bass” in between every song) but once again, from where I’m sitting it’s pretty much perfect.

The Pet Shop Boys are comfortably the most exciting band here. Their bold, trippy visuals are perfect fodder for a main stage that’s been dominated by comparatively humdrum indie for the past two days. They’ve got a proper SET (theme = boxes), an expensive-looking desk for Chris Lowe to stand behind and actual costume changes! Neil Tennant starts with a neon box on his head then switches to 3D glasses and a top hat, then a tux with bow tie. He’s no Tim Burgess.

It’s a masterful set. ‘Heart’ a bold but controlled opener that’s followed by a run of mostly new songs before an uppercut of unimpeachable hits. Their range is stunning. The joyful tragic stomp of ‘Always On My Mind’, the devastatingly sad ‘Being Boring’, the perfect crystalline pop of ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This?’. Tennant’s beautifully economic lyrics means there’s a sea of European accents singing back to him with added weird vowel sounds. All sorts of people around me mouth every word.

The Field are expanded to a trio with a drummer and bassist aiding Axel Willner. It’s a slightly uncomfortable setup but not enough to deny the irresistible blisspulse they’re creating. It’s undeniably E music, giddy waves of euphoric noise skipping endlessly out of the speakers. I’m pretty much sober watching them but they make me feel entranced, a bit high. After forever, ‘Over The Ice’ finally breaks to utter delirium. I snap out of it and dance until sunrise at the best indie disco I’ve ever been to at the ATP stage. Thanks, DJ Coco. Thanks, Primavera.

No related posts.