Hey children of the 80s! Do you remember the end scene in "The Land Before Time"? When Little Foot finally finds the “Great Valley”, and there are bucketloads of all the things he could ever want in life? Water, green leaves, love and such? The Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona is a little like that. This is going to be a pretty bias review. As is the convention of Festival journalism, accounts are perverted by drugs, alcohol and poor time management skills. So let’s get it on.
barcelona © haireOnly instead of dinosaurs, the landscape is full of beautiful hipsters from all over the globe, all under 30, dressed to the hilt. There are still the rolling green hills and plants, and you can smell the ocean, 200 metres away. It is blissful. The architecture surrounding the grounds is peaceful, abstract and serene. It’s all white. There is enough eye candy and excitement in the air to quell the thirst until the bands start. And this leaves the feeling that the ticket price has already been paid for.And there’s no rush. The program only contains a few tragic clashes, such as Dr Octagon and Public Enemy on the first night, and Throbbing Gristle and Mission of Burma on the last. But this is seemingly an intelligent decision - fans of Hip Hop or Industrial would obviously have their preferences and loyalties already made up. The walks between stages are lovely – lush and spacious paths designed for heavy human traffic, and shitloads of convenient public toilets so there aren’t piss trails turning the site into a swampland.
barcelona © haireThere were lots of highlighter pen marks the program to get excited about before the festival started. Public Enemy’s rendition of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back with a whole band was the first. They still sounded completely fuck-off, loud, fresh and relevant. Likewise, Portishead’s outdoor concert was spellbinding - the main Rock Deluxe stage that hosted them was a natural amphitheatre, so the sound reverberated through the seating and the soil barriers cusped the feeling of paranoia, desperation and grief that powers their music.
Texans Explosions In The Sky were a bit false to witness after the Portishead strike. Abandoning the structure of their later album work, they raged into a fairly spontaneous set, and their grasp of the spectrums of pain seemed childish compared to the fine-tuned visions offered by Portishead. Also sonically, they were trounced by math-rock vets Shipping News earlier in the night, who were composed and sinisterly aggressive as all Hell.
Placed side by side on the same stage, The Sonics and Devo were two highlights of the whole festival. And although this is harsh to say, The Sonics did come across as soulless. Still a tight, high energy, and flawless band, but age had really affected the sincerity of investment bankers screaming “Psycho!”. However it was fun as fuck and the rock ‘n’ roll simplicity of their tunes (as well as Louie Louie and other garage classics) somehow offered freshness to a festival full of distorted, improvised and electronic acts.
Devo on the other hand, almost twenty years younger than The Sonics but still old enough to be many festival goers’ dads, sounded and moved like they were back in 1980! They were fluid, operatic and brilliant.
TG © haireAll through the festival, the “CD DROME” stage claimed the lives of brilliant acts whenever it could, viciously smiting them with shitty sound quality, overbearing treble, feedback and instrument dropouts. At a festival where sound quality was paramount, and for the most part irreproachable, this stage decimated the performances of both psych legends Eric’s Trip and most crushingly the Dirty Projector’s shows into unlistenable pieces of trash.
Another theme of the festival was the cute early 90’s grunge war that silently took place. Semi kinda-maybe pitted against each other where the juggernauts of 90s rock - Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, Shellac and Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks. And Christ! They all sounded fuckin great except Lou Barlow, whose sound really hasn’t aged well. Shellac, despite being playful with each other onstage between songs, where cold and calculated, The Jicks where carrying on the Pavement joke and totally psychedelic and perfect, and Dinosaur Jr sounded like Black Jesus’s dick itself – so smooth, paced, enormous and longing. But Sebadoh just sounded retro in their set. It could have been because they were the only of these bands to play the largest stage and got a bad mix, devoid of all the lofi qualities of what always made them great, but still, it sounded like they were trying so hard to have a “festival sound”, that really doesn’t go down so well in Europe.
catpower © haireThe Cat Power performance is another story in itself for the night. You know when you don’t see a fucked up friend for a while and when you finally do they have changed their medication and they are all of a sudden Mr Personality and you can’t really deal with the fact and you don’t recognise them anymore because they are able to have conversations in public and stuff? This is what seeing Cat Power is like. I have memories of her playing a 20 minute long solo set and then finishing with an hour of karaoke to her own mixtape, in Australia about five years ago. That mixtape fantasy has realised itself, and to see her strutting the stage without any instruments, like a horny tiger, with an amazing band including Judah Bauer and Chris White is awesome but hard to get used to. Maybe I’m just more conservative than I thought.
Six Organs Of Admittance struggled a little bit with the less than personal festival atmosphere. What is normally a set of bouncing soundwaves and warmth from them just disappeared into the stratosphere and they had nothing to back it up with. Also struggling was poor Mary Weiss, whose vocal chords couldn’t handle a fifth gig in a row and had lost their power. Regardless of the shortcomings of her age and her apologies, the fucking drummer of her band had no excuse for slowing the tempo halfway through every fucking song. The three crowning glories of the festival were thus:
silver jews © haire3) Holy Fuck. Man, at 4.30am on the opening night these guys made the atmosphere feel high if you where straight, religious if you were agnostic and electric if you were flesh. They made me reconsider all my prejudices about hipster-noise-disco, and when the power was pulled just as the entire crowd was trying to get onstage, it couldn’t have gotten better for them. It was instant cult status.
2) Silver Jews. David Berman’s sardonic lyrics and Malkmus’s soaring guitar in the Spanish afternoon sun was something romantic music nerd’s wet dreams are made of. They were clear and precise, sending their message of Sisyphus’ saguine smile into the hot air.
1) Mission of Burma. It was a hard decision to choose between Throbbing Gristle and Mission of Burma. But seeing that every fat gutted radio presenter with a VIP pass was in the line for the Auditorium where the Gristle were playing, and Mission of Burma actually still do good albums, I went for the latter. And it was jaw shattering. These dudes still sound so passionate and believing in what they stand for, and with the current state of music they don’t have to change their style to sound modern. They were a blitzkrieg, not a dull moment in the set, not a foot out of step. They shyly promoted anarchist leanings between songs, and then blasted away again, it felt like the Minutemen still were a band, gigging into their twilight.
Primavera Sound this year was the best lineup and well organised festival I have ever seen. Let us pray that main sponsor Estrella Damm doesn’t bring anymore bad taste to the festival apart from their shitty beer, and this festival will always be the southern rival to anything All Tomorrow’s Parties can cook up.
-- Jimmy Trash/Silke Zentgraf
