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I wrote a piece, better than Pitchforks in my humble opinion, to highlight my favorite acts I've seen this week. With seeing like 50, 60 acts.. It was very hard to round it up, so I'm also giving some shout-outs. Coulda been longer, but wanted to make it easy for the eye aswell.. Enjoy.
Post by Fitter Happier on Jun 4, 2024 16:20:56 GMT -5
I don't even know where to begin. About to fly home to Pittsburgh. Still haven't processed it all. Mrs. Fitterhappier and I had just as good as a time as last year. Moments that stand out off the top of my head is running over from Vampire Weekend and my jaw absolutely hitting the floor when Beth Gibbons played Roads. Really took my breath away. The Ratboys>Stella Maris>Phoenix run on Wednesday with some of y'all! Dancing my ass off to Arca right in front of the sound board then running it back with some of y'all again at Charli! The rain was pretty rough but we did that PJ>Mitski>SZA run and don't regret it at all. The National from 5-6 rows back (Mrs. Fitterhappier's favorite band and a live act that never gets old for me). I could go on and on and on. But this has really taken the place of my favorite festival and I'm already scheming of how to get back next year. Hopefully something that will sell my superego aka Mrs. Fitterhappier, e.g. The Cure, Robyn, Fiona Apple, Bon Iver...
shuck and gocatsnu it was great meeting and dancing with y'all! theo and Crab Mech and Bing it was great seeing you again and catching up! hoffm83n until next time.
Greatest fest in the world? Damn, I have so much more to say, but we're about to take off.
Imagine this. Let’s say it’s Tuesday, about noon, in Barcelona. Let’s say that earlier that day, you had woken up too early for your flight from Paris because it was at Charles de Gaulle and you assumed it would take a long time to clear security since it was an international flight after all (it did not). Let’s say that you embarrassed yourself at the airport train station by fumbling around and taking too long at the ticket station because they didn’t have the train pass you wanted, everything was written in Catalan, and no matter how many buttons you pushed the machine wouldn’t accept your credit card. Let’s say you get to your hotel, maybe more like a glorified hostel, and you set your bag down only to find out you and your roommate only got one key to share between the two of you for the week. As you sit there in your windowless room, pondering the situation, you think for a moment, but then you say: “Well, I guess we should just go to Biercab now then.”
Welcome to Primavera.
So I’d been to Primavera before in 2019 but that was a whole different animal, for reasons both structural (Bits was open, and the bridge was fully accessible to all), and personal (I went with my family, we stayed at a hotel three blocks away from the entrance, I didn’t do any Ciutat shows). Having caught the bug of having more disposable income as I enter into my 30s and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way American festivals were going, my sights naturally turned to Spain. After all, the Spanish are sophisticated people with great taste who do things like drink gin and tonics or eat dinner at 9 PM or openly try and steal an entire pizza from you on the final day of a music festival. Why wouldn’t I want to go back to a festival that’s clearly booked with more care for its lineup and with total disregard for how long you might want to sleep on any given day? The answer is because I really, really wanted to go to Glastonbury really, really, really badly and didn’t get tickets. So I ended up here! Overall, of course, I had a fantastic time at Primavera, but it remains quite possibly the most exhausting festival I’ve been to if you try and do it all. Even with Bits totally gone! You’ll probably do more walking at Glastonbury, but it’s a day shorter and you’ll also do a lot more sitting at bars and a lot less going to sleep at 8 AM.
So, anyway, where was I? Oh, right, starting the time honored festival tradition of binge drinking. Theo, myself, and later hoffm83n headed to BierCab, the venerated Barcelona beer bar that I loved going to both times we went. Super friendly staff, super great beer selection, shockingly super great food. We then parted our separate ways and I headed straight to Laut for the first Ciutat show of the weekend. Laut was an odd venue, a literal hallway with a bar and a coat check in the back. I arrived in time for Daniela Pes, an Italian performer with a really commanding voice and some cool synth playing. I was in the back of the hallway for this show, and it felt like I was somehow a mile away; during the set break I moved up closer and after walking about 10 feet or so I was in front of the stage. Reflecting on it now, I still have no idea what the capacity of this venue could possibly be, but it was not a lot. But this made the show feel more special so I didn’t mind. Then Mabe Fratti came on with her full band; this was my first “holy shit” set of the week, an unholy symphony of distorted guitars and plucked cello to create some truly unexpected harmonies, with a sound unclear if it was aiming for shoegaze or jazz and ending up somewhere in a truly great middle.
However, unsatisfied with seeing just one show in a night, I headed down the street to Paral·lel 62, a really, really good venue to catch Sweeing Promises and Les Savy Fav. I’d seen both these bands before and ended up switching my opinions on them, almost certainly because the settings swapped. I saw Sweeping Promises play a freezing outdoor show at Music Frozen Dancing 2022 and by that time was too cold to enjoy the set; this time inside in summer they were beaming with joy as they crushed through their zippy punk tracks that sound way better when they’re not lo-fi. I then had a great 15 minute conversation with them afterwards about Midwest life and Pulp vs. Deftones before I went to go catch Les Savy Fav. They were super nice and a great hang, I told them to come see me at the festival if they spotted my flag. (They didn’t.) I saw Les Savy Fav at Riot Fest in 2021. Someone on here described them afterwards as “PG.G. Allin”, a phrase rattling around in my brain to this day, using tables and mic cords and garbage bags to create as much audience havoc as possible. This time, it was more like G Allinn. Tim Harrington ran a lot through the audience and unexpectedly jumped off a balcony, but I think he works better as a prop comic than as a short distance sprinter. Luckily, the new music sounded really good live so I don’t have much to complain about.
—
On my second day, knowing this was the last day I was going to be able to do anything while still feeling reasonably human, I decided to skip Parc Guell (boring, costs 10 euros, for tourists), and make my way to Montjuic instead (beautiful, amazing views, was featured as a pit stop on The Amazing Race 10). I skipped the cable car after finding out it wasn’t covered under my Hola pass and made the hike up to the top, which was much prettier anyway. The Palau Nacional at the bottom is very pretty, I took my picture on the staircase where Phil Kehogan eliminated Dustin and Kandice nearly 20 years ago, and made my way to Los Caracoles with Theo and pablo. A patient of mine had recommended this restaurant to me, so I had to go. The meal was…fine, nothing spectacular, but I really enjoyed my paella and there was a funny moment where the wait asked me if I wanted to take a photo of the paella first before it was served and I couldn’t hear him at all so he had to say it about 10 times before I got it. Satisfied with our food, we headed through La Boqueria towards BierCab again, only to walk by CCCB and discover that the Primavera Pro showcase was happening here in the courtyard. The nice thing about this courtyard was that it had a bar and was in a rather pretty area, the downside was it was really hot and everyone cornered in the left side in the shade instead of actually in front of the stage. The band playing at that time was Flying Moon in Space, a German art school-kid krautrock band that was, no shit, one of the best sets I saw that weekend. Every member of the band had insane, frenetic energy (including knocking over the stage barrier!) in spite of the fact they were usually just playing one chord at a time a la the Britney Spears’ piano player videos. Their anchor was their drummer, remarkable at slowly building up the tempo in a song, and the highlight was the final song which featured the singer saying - say it with me, everyone! - “Hoo ha ha hoo! Nananana” for 12 minutes straight over an increasingly fast drum beat. It was so fucking great. They will never play in the US but I need to see them again tomorrow.
After some more time at BierCab, shooting the shit, prompting people to rate shoegaze as a genre of music on a scale of 1-10, it was time to head in to the Inaugural. Pablo and I did get in to catch Tropical Fuck Storm do the "Stayin’ Alive” cover, which was good enough for me! This is the time for Chicago! This is the time to see Motherfucking Ratboys! We caught up with FH and his wife near the rail. Ratboys were one of two Chicago bands making slow, slightly dreamy indie rock this weekend but of the two, Ratboys are the more rockin’, with a couple of extended guitar solos that bordered into jam territory near the end. Of course, though, the real highlight was holding up my Chicago flag and getting smiles and looks from every member of the band during the set, and then a Spanish guy asking me to take a picture with the flag at the end. Special shout out to FH for asking me if he could help hold the flag the entire weekend.
After that, we hung around for Stella Maris, which was, simply put, one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen at a festival. Stella Maris is a fictional Christian pop group from Spanish TV show La Mesías, which is unavailable to watch in the US and even if I could I don’t think I’d understand it much, both because I barely speak Spanish and because I later realized there was so much specific Spanish Catholic cultural context I simply wouldn’t get unless I was immersed in the culture (e.g. at one point during the set a group of people came together to form this quasi human pyramid with people standing on top of each other shoulders on the top, forming a tower. I found out the next day from a poster in a cultural center that these are called Els Castells. I had no idea!) BUT what I do understand and like is camp and entertainment, and holy shit this was one the campiest, most entertaining things I’ve ever seen. If I had to describe a general outline of the show: a group of six sisters (the actresses from the show) come on stage singing insane Christian hyperpop with early 2000s Web 1.0 graphics flashing behind them on the screen with the intention of converting everyone to their cult. Eventually the actor who plays their dad joins them on stage to further their mission, as more dancers come out to do intricate choreography. Eventually, the human tower people come back, hoisting their dead mother through the audience towards the stage. She comes back on stage for the final song and gets brought back to live to the rejoicing of everyone in the audience. The problem with this straightforward description is that it cannot capture how catchy the music was and how funny the visuals were, even if you didn’t speak Spanish or weren’t familiar with the culture. It was a totally unique, one of a kind of performance. The Spanish gays were going nuts for this shit. I compared it to if the Righteous Gemstones did a concert, but that’s not quite right either - “Misbehavin’” is certainly campy, but not to this extent. It would be like if 100 gecs produced the Righteous Gemstones and they stole all of Magdalena Bay’s visuals. And also someone came back to life at the end. It was pure insanity. And this was free! You didn’t have to a ticket to see this shit!! You could just walk through the door!!! This is the kind of performance I was referring to earlier when I was talking about the kind of unique performances only this festival can conceieve/offer. Here's a video of it:
We’ll get to Phoenix in a second, but this is when the venue was starting to fill up and the drink lines were starting to be a problem. I made this joke frequently throughout the weekend, and I felt bad after every time I’d say it because I’d been drinking and it was kind of mean. Looking back on it sober and after experiencing the beer lines the rest of the weekend I feel quite confident asking this question again: are Spanish the stupidest fucking people on Earth? Only three bars were open at the festival at this time (understandable honestly) but the lines would be about 20 people long. You’d get to the front and notice Spanish people chatting with the bartenders like they were friends, asking about various cocktail combos, taking their sweet time paying, like they had never waited in a fucking bar line before. It was infuriating. It was never a problem again after this one specific instance but holy shit I’m still mad thinking about it now. No wonder Primavera needs about 10 cash registers at every corner of the festival.
Anyway, Phoenix was really good! They did a very tight, hour long set, all the hits all the way through and that’s that. I’m assuming most of you have seen Phoenix in the last 10 years so you get the gist of it: big LED screens with hyper colorful graphics, high energy the whole time, having a secret weapon in drummer/huge showman Thomas Hedlund. But there were two surprises: one, fewer Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix songs than I thought there’d be, which I sort of liked especially for a 70 minute festival (Phoenix if you are reading this please play more Ti Amo songs again though! It’s a great album!), the second being that Ezra Koenig came out for the last couple of songs, including Tonight. We cut out early during Identical to make it to Apolo [2] in time for the rest of the night. But we’re going to have a very important story to tell in a minute, so please note that Thomas Mars was wearing a black shirt and black pants.
Theo, hoffm83n and I arrived at Apolo, a shockingly intimate club with a shockingly huge bar and less shockingly large smoking patio. (Shout out to Richard from Germany, who we had a lovely conversation with during breaks.) Fat Dog was up first, one of the few disappointments for me of the weekend imo. Given how loud and confrontational and funny their music is, I thought for sure their stage presence would match, but it was a whole lot of standing around until the very end. It was hard not to contrast it with performances in a similar style like Flying Moon in Space earlier or Mandy, Indiana later. But the music was fun and enough of an electronic kick after Phoenix to get the night starting strong. Fortunately, The Dare was able to amp up the night a bit more, with his loud black and white Helvetica graphics, scream-talking-singing, and indoor smoking working much better in a club than at a festival. He did his set which was mostly new music (including a few new songs I didn’t recognize from the last time). My only caveat is that I would’ve liked this more if the dang songs were out now! I want to sing along better to them! They’re very silly and fun even if he plays the straight club kid parody character completely straight!
But now we have to talk about Fake Thomas Mars.
Around this time, Theo points out a guy with shaggy hair wearing a black shirt and pants standing in front of us, swaying along to the music. It’s Thomas Mars! Theo wants to talk to him, I don’t, I don’t like talking to people more famous than I. (And I’m pretty famous, I’ve been featured on JID’s Instagram story!) Theo goes up and tells him “Hey man, great set today.” and he responds, “Yeah this is really good right now” about The Dare, which seems like a very famous-person-deflecting-attention thing to do. I don’t think anything of it later until this other American guy we met at Stella Maris gets really excited about this prospect too, and eventually after The Dare ends they get the courage to go up and talk to him directly. The problem is, while this guy looks like Thomas Mars from behind, he does not look like Thomas Mars from the front. Worse still, he’s American. Worse still, he knows Phoenix but does not know who Tomas Mars is. Ordinarily this would be incredibly embarrassing for all involved, but later we had a great talk about LA club culture in the Ed Banger era, we took a picture, and now I follow him on Instagram so it all worked out nicely.
Anyway, we also saw Desire! It’s not my favorite Johnny Jewel project tbh and I find Jewel’s ability to find singers of a very similar type…interesting, but I was shocked by how much by how much I liked this. For such a dark project, the energy was consistently sunny and fun the whole time, with singer Megan Louise having a blast the whole time and displaying vocal chops that exceeded Desire on record. Add into that the fact that they did both their “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” covers and you’ve got a recipe for a really fun closing set at 3 AM. JD Twitch of Optimo DJed afterwards, I was half paying attention, half dancing to him dropping Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo” of all songs, half talking to fake Thomas Mars. (Hold on, don’t tell me those fractions are wrong.) But after about 45 minutes of being there, it was really time to head out. After all, you don’t want to waste all of your energy before the festival even begins by staying out until 5 AM, right! Right…?
Ok this is about 3000 words so I think this is a good place to stop. We’ll continue on with the remainder of the festival soon.
I contracted some sort of Primavirus so progress on the next installment has been slow. One last Fat Dog piece: I did just remember this morning that they covered Benny Bennassi’s “Satisfaction” and that was easily the best part of their set.
Still adjusting to being home and I'll write a full review at some point. A few favorite moments: Thursday's main stage run of Amyl > VW > Pulp > Justice and then capping it off with Herensauna. Double fisting Cava at Troye on Saturday. All of the rain/lightning sets and still having the energy to dance during Róisín Murphy on Sunday. Leaving out a ton, but goddamn that was fun.
Post by aburnedhill on Jun 7, 2024 13:49:44 GMT -5
feeling a tad ill as well so have just been snoozing since I got home on Tuesday. What an unforgettable first trip to Spain! So much music it was overwhelming. Only complaint was the startling lack of free water and the policing of water bottles, it is like they wanted people to pass tf out. Like I get it we are all adults but think of the children!! They would block the path to the water refill by Cupra and the Maybelline pop up like every night for an extended period of time. Just a huge headache to have to defiantly walk past the line of security just to grab a glass of water.
ANYWAYS Top sets of the weekend for moi were Amyl, Charli, Jessica Pratt.
The thunder and lightning storms took the wind out of our sails a bit but we still caught "Down By the Water" til the finale for PJ which was magic like none other. Then watching Mitski have everyone hunker down to see her was pretty special. SZA was also a big highlight for me and my homegirl. The plan is to be back in 2026 and at Glasto or Fuji Rock Fest in 2025. Also! For the in the city shows, Sweeping Promises blew me away. Got to snap a pic with the lead singer and chat for a sec
I contracted some sort of Primavirus so progress on the next installment has been slow. One last Fat Dog piece: I did just remember this morning that they covered Benny Bennassi’s “Satisfaction” and that was easily the best part of their set.
BBC6 New Music Fix played that on their 5/30, very good
Somebody fire the production people at Porto. They had to cancel the entire slate of acts on the Vodafone stage because it couldnt handle the weight of the Justice production. Who the fuck doesnt bother to check in advance what the deal is? Totally sucks for everyone. And thats the same stage Pulp is scheduled for tomorrow.
Of course, Primavera “officially” starts on Wednesday when the grounds open for the Inaugural but Thursday always feels like the real first big boy day. Get ready to stand in the shadows and chug those Red Bulls, because this is your first 12+ hour day! Fortunately, I was “prepared” by sleeping in a practically windowless, featureless room for 8 hours and waking up feeling refreshed enough. Theo and I popped over for bocadillos and cafés con leche before popping over to the festival grounds. (If you really want to flex your Duolingo muscles, the question you may want to ask your waitress if she gives you a receipt to sign with nothing attached is “¿Tienes un bolígrafo?” But she disappeared before I had the chance. Bummer.) In my opinion, having done it twice, your first stop on Thursday at Primavera should always be the Auditori, the impossibly shaped triangular auditorium next to the Parc grounds. It is a spacious, comfortable, dark venue that’s a perfect place to see quieter acts out of the hot sun. The first year I went, Julien Baker played to a packed 4 PM audience, but this time it was different - no less because the first act, Ángeles, Victor, Gloria & Javier weren’t quiet at all. AVGJ is a Spanish supergroup made up of four people from different genres - flamenco, jazz, electronic - to create, well, electronic music with jazz drumming that has super distinct flamenco singing over it. After some more digging now, it appears their name is a reference to Cánovas, Rodrigo, Adolfo & Guzmán, a 70s Spanish pop supergroup who Wikipedia tells me were often compared to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Wow! That’s a lot to live up to! Fortunately, though, as you might have been able to tell by that stylistic description, the group operates in a much more contemporary milieu, focusing less on the harmonies you might expect of references like that in favor of unique playing with dynamics, bombastic rhythms, and a hell of a lot of belting when required. Curiously, I felt the album wasn’t super representative of this; the live performance sounded a lot darker, louder, and to be frank more interesting than the album let on. I heard rumblings from others in the group that they’re breaking up after a final series of performances, but I hope that’s not true.
Anyway, that was a lot, so next I saw the end of Viuda, a Spanish kind of gothy pop-punk band. I somehow remember nothing of this but my videos tell me it was fine. So we’ll move across the stage to Voxtrot, a band I only started taking seriously as a band to see about two weeks ago when the schedule dropped. I didn’t really know much about them other than that they’re from Texas, started in the early 2000s, and were described as “indie pop”, a descriptor which can mean just about anything for a band of that time period. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they fit way more on the kind of jangly C86 end of the spectrum, all guitars, more or less all upbeat, with singer Ramesh Srivastava giving just enough swagger to kind of remind me of a Hamilton Leithauser type. (And with just enough specific vocal inflections to remind me of a Ben Gibbard type. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends entirely on your tolerance of Ben Gibbard.) They were one of a few bands who seemed bit an unsure why anyone wanted them to play together again but were grateful to do so, and I’m grateful I got to saw them!
Now. I don’t meme about them death, so it may not be entirely clear but I really love Arab Strap. As Days Get Dark was my favorite album of 2021 and their latest, I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍 (whose title I included in its entirety for obvious reasons) is really, really good too in spite of the fact that it takes the Black Mirror joke of “what if phones but too much?” literally, and all of this is to say nothing about their very different but still excellent 90s/00s output. I saw them at Pitchfork 2016 and I liked it a lot. Ok you probably know where I’m going with this so let’s get it over with: this was not very good, and weirdly not really for any performance reasons. There were sound mixing issues that seemed both unintentional (Aidan Moffat’s vocals were so quiet at the beginning?) and intentional (you couldn’t hear any of the synths at all in favor of the drums??) that virtually no other set at Cupra I saw during the week had. Including Jai Paul! Add to the fact that it was bright daylight out for this and it just didn’t quite add up. I don’t think they really could’ve scheduled this differently - no way the band would’ve gone for a 4 AM Plentitude set or whatever and no way was the festival going to conflict this band with Pulp or Beth Gibbons, so I’m going to try and make some lemonade out of this and say that the song selection was pretty good and we got a cool appearance of “Girls of Summer” in a 45 minute set. But I was a bit let down by this.
Oh, I can’t almost believe I forgot to mention: in front of Theo and I at Arab Strap, there stood a guy who was sensually eating a hot dog in front of us, his eyes closed, his shirt off, facing us, basking in the sun in total bliss. Nobody enjoyed this festival more than he did.
At this point I wanted to catch Lambchop but was a bit hopped up after double fisting Estrellas during Arab Strap. I was also in the mood to bounce around between sets. I caught up with hoffm83n at Plenitude for Mannequin Pussy while Theo went to go wait in line for Boiler Room. I saw Mannequin Pussy did Drunk II early in the setlist and thought ah what the fuck, it’ll be a good time. I got a bit of the short end of the stick here: the crowd swelled unexpectedly but it was full of talkers and I did get some funny looks for screaming along to “I STILL LOVE YOU, YOU STUPID FUCK!!!” so I took off. I’ll give it my all again at Pitchfork for a crowd of hipsters who actually deserve it.
Before cutting over to Lambchop, I stopped for a quick Red Bull before heading into the Auditori and caught a bit of Dillom, a guy I had to google five times to make sure I was seeing the right person. He’s from Argentina and sounds like Machine Gun Kelly but worse. Just thought you all wanted to know that. Anyway I chugged my drink, went into the Auditori for Lambchop and wow I’m glad I didn’t wander too far away from this because this was really good. It was billed as a “solo piano” performance which was slightly misleading because Kurt Wagner was just singing and he was accompanied by a pianist. However, I didn’t mind this at all, because it put a ton of emphasis on the songs and lyrics themselves, with Kurt standing still in a suit the whole time on stage, letting out each phrase very carefully. A highlight was him covering obscure charity compilation song “Listening (to Lambchop by myself again)”, as was his pianist getting a turn on vocals to close out the show. This would not have worked anywhere else but in the Auditori. I’m so glad it’s there.
Afterwards I was in a bit of mood to wander so I walked over to catch a bit of Roc Marciano, who I’d always heard was a really good technical live rapper. He is! Unfortunately, the crowd was deader than I’d like so I headed over to Blonde Redhead, who I never really got into out of a couple of songs but wow I wish I just came straight over for this set because it was so good. Kazu Makino worked that stage like no other shoegaze band I’ve seen before, and the Pace Brothers were no slouches either, wailing on their respective instruments to make a lot more noise than you think there would be given the minimalist setup. Another wonderful surprise of the weekend.
Afterwards, I wandered a bit over to the warehouse. Tristan dragged me here once in 2019 to see Brat Star DJ set and it was a very cool venue then and now - then, it was a bit darker and felt more like an illegal rave taking place in a parking garage, now it’s lit up bright, with an insane soundsystem that’s liable to crack your spine in half from the vibrations of the speakers. Nazar was pretty good! Apparently hoffm83n has a regular correspondence with him on Instagram so this was one of the weekend’s highlights for him but personally from, even with earplugs I physically could not handle how much bass was coming out of the speakers during his set. Pablo sent a message that Amaarae’s set was good and I ducked out at the right time. Amaarae was really good! She remains one of my favorite Afrobeats artists which helps a lot, but I think live she’s pretty funny and brings a unique perspective to what Afrobeats looks like live. I arrived just in time to witness her bring several audience members engage in a dance contest. It was two gay guys and one woman who did an impressive voguing routine while wearing a floor length dress. You are going to be shocked to learn who won.
Afterwards it was time to head back to Cupra for Beth Gibbons. The crowd was shockingly light for this set (if I may get ahead of myself for a moment, there were more people at Atarashii Gakko than this) but no matter; everyone who was at this set knew what was up. Lives Outgrown is a pretty subtle album and the audience was sufficiently differential to that fact to allow the waves of sound from her shockingly large band wave over them. There were a lot of obscure instruments that got used once, there was a lot of unique things to listen for, and there was Beth Gibbons at the center, her smoky soprano taking center stage for these songs. She reminds me of a bit of PJ Harvey in a way: they both have big bands filled up with exceptionally talented players you can look up endless minutiae about, but no matter how much you try paying attention to anything else, your eyes are always going to be drawn back to the most singularly commanding presence on stage.
But enough reverence. It’s time to have some fun. I got confused trying to follow the directions of security on how to get to Mordor and it took me longer than I would’ve liked to get to see Pulp. I sang along to “Disco 2000” while approaching the main stages but didn’t see as much as I would’ve liked for my first time since I promptly marched over to the Estrella Damm stage to get as close as possible for Justice. Fortunately, I still had a pretty good view of Pulp even if I wasn’t able to take a good video. Jarvis Cocker sort of gives off the vibe of a big swing band leader live, with more players on stage than I was anticipating and way more steps for Jarvis to climb up and down on, lit up by a huge parade of flashing colored lights. But of course, the real flashing lights we all came for were from Justice. I spent the beginning of the set telling everyone to shut the fuck up, which led me to eventually befriending an Italian woman named Yaya, who curiously wanted me to scream with her at different high points in the set; I spent the rest of the set looking at the moving lights dangling from the top of the sage, wondering how the fuck Justice did that. I saw some post on the Justice subreddit that was broadly critical of the show since they’re relying more heavily on mixers now, which reduces a lot of potential spontaneity, but we have to be real for a second: on the 2017 Woman tour, Justice brought more synths an Ableton controllers with them just to play a few chords on one or two songs. Historically, Justice have taken the “less is more” approach with their live show, adding a bit more each time; this is the year they finally decided to take the “more is more” approach and they somehow managed to walk away with a light show of flashing rainbows that ends up being more technically impressive than Eric Prydz’ fake holograms. I know what I’m picking every time. Bonus points for randomly dropping samples of eight songs or so during the second half of Safe and Sound. That shit was so cool.
Of course, when you’re that hyped up on alcohol and caffeine, you gotta keep the party going. What better place to do it at than a Belgian black metal band’s set? Wiegedood wasn’t particularly great (Primavera should’ve booked Blood Incantation smh) ut I always love this festival’s commitment to booking 5-6 random loud ass bands each year and I always appreciate the chance to get up to some bullshit while watching a metal band of any stripe. In this case, that meant me, Bing, hoffm83n, and two random people trying to start a mosh pit and failing miserably. Obviously I would’ve liked to go harder, but the fact that we tried starting a five person mosh pit at a fucking black metal show and nobody was willing to join in is one of those hilarious indelible memories I’ll always carry with me long after most of my memories of this festival fade. Also, the fact I was wearing my gayest fucking outfit while trying to mosh doesn’t hurt either.
After Wiegedood we went up for A.G. Cook. I don’t know how I thought a live set of his would work but I wasn’t expecting him to just DJ his own songs. Unfortunately, I don’t think that setup really works for his music; I think I’d much rather see a couple people hitting drum pads or something just to emphasize how strange and alien his production can feel. But we stayed for most of his set and caught most of the rest of Herrensauna. At this point I was blitzed out of my mind enough where every five seconds or so I thought it’d be funny to make a joke about how it was cultural appropriation for women to be DJing a group designed to simulate what it’s like to be at a DJ set in a gay bathhouse. Its was not very funny, but everyone is entitled to a bit they’re not particularly proud of and this happened to be mine. Of course, this was my favorite DJ set of the weekend; it was high BPM techno through and through with a melodic edge to make it stand out more from the more boring sets of their Berlin peers. I took some shitty pictures with Theo on the Cupra seats before we headed back home way too late, oblivious to the fact we were about to be out even later for circumstances beyond our control the next day.
OK that seems like a sufficient enough cliffhanger for a story like 20 people on here already know. Talk to you soon!
By this point in the weekend, I felt fairly invincible. I had been getting sufficient enough sleep, I wasn’t feeling too terribly hung over at all, and I was eating enough breakfast and late night hot dogs to hopefully stave off anything terrible. Of course, this is all foreshadowing, but you don’t need to know that yet.
Theo went to go smoke and I was outside of our hotel with really nothing to do, so I headed back over to the Primavera Pro stage at CCCB to go see Nita, who on record sound a bit dreamier but live sounded a lot punkier. The stage area was also fairly empty as it was a couple days ago, with most of us clinging to the shade, but again they still managed to deliver quite an energetic performance in spite of that; the drummer in particular was banging so hard on his instrument that at one point his floor tom fell over, followed later by his sticks flying in the air, requiring him to slap his cymbals for the final song. I also want to give a shout out to the bartender here who lightly chided me for not bringing in a cup twice….and then never charged me for the cup either time. I wanted too tick around in the pace for the Argentine band Feli Colina, who looked like they had an interesting setup going (harmonizing vocalists, a whole array of unique percussion, a synthesizer…) but they took way too long sound checking so I have no idea what they were like. Bummer!
I headed over to the Parc to head back into the Auditori. I was hearing rumblings by this point that the line to get in was crazy long and that it wasn’t opening at its usual 3:45PM opening time. I got off the train and saw who was responsible: the huge gathered crowd of Lana fans, who continue to show up to these events in their best Flannery O’Connor cosplay, ready to scream along to their favorite songs about burning their ex-lovers with an almost-finished cigarette on the Santa Monica Pier before heading to church or whatever. (Just kidding Lana fans! She’s fine.) Fortunately, though, once the gates opened the crowd fanned out a little bit, but security had changed the lines to be more accommodating to single day tickets. Once this became apparent (because the signs are written in English and are color coded and either way, it’s not too hard to read them in Spanish), I switched lines and tried pushing my way inward towards the full 3 day pass line. However, this did not appear to satisfy one particular security guard, who kept manhandling me to get into the correct line. I was not thrilled about this but this was really the only logistical difficulty I ran into all weekend and it’s hard to be mad about just because of one asshole security guard. Oh well.
I wandered into the Auditori for Charlemagne Palestine, who I really liked, though opinions varied significantly. (Bing in particular was not a fan.) Today he performed his Strumming Music piece, which, if you are not familiar, is a famed 70s minimalist piece involving hitting similar notes on piano at various speeds over and over again to the point of almost induced meditation. At the end, he stood up, did some brief singing in Yiddish, clanked some wine glasses together, and that was that. Afterwards, he came out in the audience and gave a speech about how his goal with Strumming Music was to create music that sounded like synthesizer playing on a piano, so that was nice. A weird audience note: sitting next to me for a while were two German (?) teenagers (??) who were talking loudly, had their feet kicked up on the seats in front of them, and had their phone brightness turned up all the way. About two-thirds of the way through the performance, they got up…….and got closer to the stage. Baffling.
I wandered over to near the entrance to catch the end of Aiko el grupo, a perfectly serviceable Spanish punk band, and caught up with hoffm83n for Silica Gel, a Korean band whose live setup I still find fascinating. Each band member had their setup on a movable platform on stage but the only person who moved off of it was the lead singer, who commanded the stage on his own but curiously left everyone else looking like they were standing in an invisible glass box on stage, still doing their best to contort into their best rockstar moves. They were a bit heavier than most typical indie rock bands but I’m not sure I’d call it quite psychedelic; I really got the sense the band members listen way more to other non-rock music and yet that still manifests itself in music that’s in some ways pretty straightforwardly rock. Anyway, reading up a bit on them now, it’s curious since they’re a huge live sensation in South Korea but aren’t super well known elsewhere and aren’t doing as well on western streaming which can be quite friendly to K-rock bands (see: DAY6, The Rose). Much to consider.
At this point hoffm83n and I were desperately trying to score Justice tickets (we both succeeded), so we weren’t moshing as hard to Scowl as we should’ve been. But we were there, they were good as always; but we both moved on to see Chelsea Wolfe. Chelsea was really, really good and really, really well suited to the Auditori, which I’d never considered as an ideal location for heavy music like this before but worked out well with its capacity for atmospheric lights and super-crisp sound. Unfortunately, something about the seats in there makes me sleepy as shit, and I had to leave for my own sake. Well, that, and because I also wanted to to see Keanu rage the fuck out with Dogstar. I saw it. It was fine.
But that’s not what we’re here for! We’re here to talk about Troye Sivan getting a simulated blowjob on stage!
I’ll be honest: I’m not a huge Troye Sivan fan. I like a couple of his songs but generally his music doesn’t do a whole lot for me. But wow, what a performance. If you’re going to see a pop show at Primavera, this is the kind of level of spectacle you hope to see: lots of choreograph, lots of lights, a unique stage setup (with two platforms on either side of the stage), and doing the worst song mercifully first. I really thought Troye was going to go for a more minimal setup with a backing track but I was pleasantly surprised. I did think he’d do full drag for “One Of Your Girls” …somehow but getting in a Madonna corset was a close-enough substitute for the song (side note which I talked with pablo about: the big thing that takes me out of the vibe of the song is that Troye tries to flirt with a straight guy by saying “yes gawd” to him. What is up with that lmao!) but the sexiest moment of course comes at the end with “Rush” and Troye making out with a dancer for a solid 10-20 seconds. Hot!
I had my highest expectations of the night for Clipse. There was a lot less hype for this reunion than I thought, and after attending the Roc Marciano show it just generally didn’t seem that the Primavera audience’s heart is really in it for American rappers, but I still wanted them to deliver as much as they could. I got worried at first because the DJ played for 18 minutes at the beginning of the set and I’d been at shows where Push showed up really really late, but then Pusha and Malice came out and Push especially was firing on all cylinders, truly a showman at heart for a man who pretty consistently claims to not need rap at all. Malice wasn’t really on the same level energy-wise but he certainly wasn’t bad and I left the set perfectly satisfied. (I would’ve liked to see them do “Trill” but oh well.) The audience wasn’t super energetic for this performance either, but I really think rap shows are where the language barrier really comes out.
I snuck down to Cupra to catch Jai Paul; as I mentioned elsewhere this may have been the best time I’ve seen him to date. The sound was perfect (which he needs lol), his stage fright is basically gone by this point, the band got to do the full setlist. Perfect! Everything I need! Is Jai Paul the next Mariah Carey? No! But that’s fine. And speaking of fine, The National were also in fine form, delivering a start-to-finish perfect greatest hits setlist I have basically zero problems with. You’ve probably seen the National before, you don’t need me to feed you an opinion on them. Shout out to Olivia from Scotland and her friends, who I had a great time with at this set. They were especially delighted when I talked English ancestry and told them my ancestors were from Wigan.
I stuck around at Mordor for Disclosure. First things first: I am really, really glad they’re doing full live sets again with the synth pads and drum pads and all that. However, I spent 90% of this set having a fun conversation with pablo in the back and I don’t regret that at all. This is *still!* a super Settle-heavy set, and look, I’ve been going to Disclosure shows for over a decade now; I want to see them do Energy deep cuts damnit! Oh well. We marched over to the front to catch Arca. First of all: wow, Arca is really fucking hot. Have we talked about this enough? Yes? Okay. Unfortunately this set didn’t live up to my own personal expectations, but that’s not really her fault: I’d heard this was a really loud set and this wasn’t meant to be loud; it was designed to show off Arca the Pop Star. She strutted around on stage, did a lot of vocal heavy performances, with enough sufficient visual punch to make it worthwhile. I wish it’d been louder for my own personal satisfaction, but that’s fine.
Finally, we ended the night heading downstairs, with a quick stop at the top of Cupra to catch a bit of Tratratrax. I expected full Latin club music from this set given Nick León’s pedigree, and it wasn’t not that, but the one thing I forgot about Nick León that I’m reminding myself watching some Boiler Room sets now is that he also tends to play fast, loud, and energetic. And of course I love all that shit so I had a great time at this. But we had to head down to catch Lanark Artefax. I really, really wish I had gotten more videos of this set because I really liked it and I know I’ll want to remember more of it in the future. There were a lot of really unique synth sounds to listen to in a way that reminded me of Objekt’s sound design work but with enough of a techno edge to make it consistently danceable. At this point it was raining and there was basically no one in the audience, so it made it feel a bit more special. But of course, our time had come too, so we headed out. (I have a ten second video on my phone of me getting a panoramic view of the lack of a crowd at this stage and halfway through Theo appears in the background smiling very creepily. It’s extremely funny.)
Theo and I headed back to our hotel, making the hourlong journey back………..only to find the door to our building wouldn’t open no matter how hard we tried. We panicked more or less immediately, and Theo contact the owner of the property. We were exhausted and desperate by this point so we headed over to an area with a couple of hotels, begging them to give us a room to sleep in, but nobody was available. The woman came back over to the building and tried opening the door, which she did once successfully, closed afterwards, and then was unable to open again. What ended up happening was that another guy in the hotel left his key in the door on the other side which rendered it impossible to open. This whole ordeal took over 90 minutes and partially ruined the final day of the festival for both of us. Moral of the story: pay more money for a hotel in Barcelona lol.
I had good luck with a hostel in 2022. You’ll probably end up with other people also going to the festival.
it was a weird hostel type situation actually, we had a private room but as far as we could tell there was only like 4 rooms in the whole building? also it was only being ran by a single person
I have a Marriott Bonvoy account, I need to rack up some rewards points on it, next time I go to Spain I’m just doing that. (There’s luckily more of an abundance of good basic cheap hotels in Paris.)