News from the Primavera Sound Festival

By Tim Carroll on June 4, 2010 in main

Tim Carroll, alum of '09, was kind enough to send us some news and photos from this year's Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona...

The Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona will torture you if you let it, so I’ve got some things to get out early. I did not see Wilco at Primavera. I didn’t see Mission of Burma or No Age. I missed Panda Bear and Fuck Buttons, the Fall and the Antlers, Shellac and the Pet Shop Boys. But I promise you I had good reasons for all of them, and I didn’t look back. Really, there’s no time for second thoughts—can’t-miss concerts pile up on top of each other so fast that you feel lucky just to sit down once in a while.

This was the 10th year of Primavera Sound. The first lasted a day and featured eleven performers. This had anywhere between 100 and 180, depending on which staffer I asked; my rough count puts it around 150, and that’s just the three days at the main festival site. The full program runs a week and includes free shows in city parks and the Barcelona metro, plus club dates and a closing party. Suffice it to say, a decade makes a difference.

THURSDAY

“This must be a big show ‘cause we all wore button-down shirts.” –Stephen Malkmus, Pavement

• One of the first things I see: kid wearing a t-shirt with Minnesota’s outline that says THE WORST STATE. The kid disappears before I can get a picture. Is this the irony everyone’s talking about?

• Security is pretty vigilant about pulling down crowd-surfers, but they don’t mess with Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus when he collapses onto us during the band’s namesake song. He’s in no hurry to get back to the stage and gets passed around throughout the shout-along “Your life is over” section.

• The XX, playing the arena-like Ray-Ban stage, draw an absolutely massive crowd. It’s hard to judge how big a group is when you’re in it, so I can’t compare to the rest of the acts, but I’m on top of the arena for this one and it is a crush down below.

• One of the nicest things about this festival is seeing how excited the musicians get about being around each other—like when Superchunk invites Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav out for a song. Harrington is ecstatic (more than usual), shouting “AWESOME,” falling back onto the stage when his part is done, then pulling out his iPhone to record, crawling around chasing Mac McCaughan’s guitar with a mic, and sprinting offstage again before the song finishes.

• Broken Social Scene brings Pavement’s Spiral Stairs (aka Scott Kannberg) out for “Texico Bitches.” Kevin Drew goes out during Pavement’s set later that night.

• There are a lot of legacy bands here, and they aren’t stingy with the favorites. Pavement opens with “Cut Your Hair” and works through “Silent Kid,” “Spit on a Stranger,” “In the Mouth a Desert,” and more. Malkmus switches his guitar out after every song and fidgets with it a lot when he’s not playing, flipping it back and forth and tossing it into the air. Spiral Stairs heads into the crowd toward the end of the set. One of the guys from Monotonix comes and twirls Bob Nastanovich around the stage. It’s a good place to be.

FRIDAY

“I wanna marry—YOU! I wanna marry—YOU!” –Tim Harrington, Les Savy Fav

• In case you hadn’t noticed, Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast is interested in marijuana. She mentions this a couple times during the set. She also points out to the ocean and says, “There’s a fucking cruise ship out there and it’s scaring the shit out of me.”

• A lot of bands keep the talk light (probably a good strategy when your time is limited and you’re competing with Spoon or whoever for everyone’s attention), but the best banter probably comes from A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers. E.g. after a five-second false start: “That was a jazz odyssey…it could have been tighter.”

• Legacy bands do play the hits, but some take their time with it. The stage lights are up and tech guys are actually out moving stuff around before Wire come back to play “12XU” as an encore.

• Les Savy Fav… Even after Tim Harrington’s Superchunk appearance, I am not prepared for this. His “AWESOME” mantra is probably the best analysis you’re going to get—the man does not mess around. He surfs as far as he can (big guy), falls, and tries again. He wades way back into the crowd, hugging and high-fiving the whole way. He goes halfway up the arena steps around the ATP stage and climbs a little metal pole to sing. He does all this with a corded mic—frantic techs are following behind, threading out more and more cord the whole time and begging him to stay each time he returns to the stage.

• In a weekend of high points, there is still no comparison to the Pixies set. They barely stop to breathe between songs, burning through most of Doolittle and plenty more in the hour and a half they’re on. It’s a blast. It’s also the best pit of the festival—lots of people, lots of energy, and everyone’s good about lifting the fallen, respecting the fringes, etc. Great show—but do they really need to sell their t-shirts for 25€?

• You know the party at the beginning of the California Love video? Joker could play that party. His 3am set, with MC/hype man Nomad in tow, felt apocalyptic enough as it was among the flickering lights and concrete pillars of the Pitchfork stage.



SATURDAY

“I’m very interested in chicken songs. This is one of the great ones.” –Van Dyke Parks

• I start the afternoon (the Primavera schedule runs from about 4pm to 6am) with ODDSAC, the hour-long video piece by Danny Perez and Animal Collective. I’m not a big Animal Collective fan, but I think this comes together nicely. Shades of David Lynch, Vito Acconci, those iamamiwhoami YouTube videos, and who knows what else.

• Bigott is one of the two Spanish acts I’m most excited about going into this weekend (the other is Delorean). Unfortunately, his set is really the only disappointment of the weekend. It’s not bad, just not as fantastic as the rest—his band isn’t especially tight, and the overpowering, skull-rattling bass that’s characteristic of the festival as a whole isn’t doing his offbeat folk sound any favors. Still, he’s very likeable and closes with “Dancing in the Dark.”

• Van Dyke Parks is 67 years old and adorable. He plays with and without a trio of youngish guys, talks about things he wrote for his children, sings adaptations of Brer Rabbit tales, and gets two standing ovations. Plenty of foreign performers this weekend do the “Hola, gracias Barcelona” thing to open their sets—Parks is the only one I see who does it in Catalan.

• You want an autoharp? Grizzly Bear’s got an autoharp. They use about as many instruments in their set as they do on their albums: aside from the basics, there’s a clarinet, flute, recorder, and more. The smoke machine is really earning its keep on this one; between that and the light show, the stage alternately looks like a sunlight-streaked chapel and the Smells Like Teen Spirit video.

• Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s warped marching-band uniform is all skulls and shininess. Before he comes out, the keyboardist tries to get the crowd ready with a call-and-response. Jamaican accent + crowd of non-native English speakers = this doesn’t work: “Say Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry!” “Yeaaaaah!” “Say Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry!” “Yeaaaaah!”

• As the last act of the festival, Fake Blood kills. A lot more people stick around until dawn than on previous nights and everyone is dancing. The weekend ends with “Mars” and it couldn’t be better.



In Summary

This festival is a really good time. The setup is impressive, the staffers are all very friendly and helpful, the lineup is staggering, the performances are thrilling, and everyone is having a lot of fun. If I can make it back someday, I’ll be there.

“This may sound like a lie, because bands tell lies all the time, but this is my favorite city in the world.” –A.C. Newman, The New Pornographers

No comments.

Post Comment

Name:

Location:

Comment:

I am using URLs in my comment:

Download the Atom or RSS feed for this category.