Primavera Sound 2015
Parc Del Forum, Barcelona
May 2015
An empty stage on the first night of Primavera
I went to bed too early. I never
saw the sunrise over the Barcelonian indie-rock skyline. I missed Underworld
and Shellac, but Primavera still remains the best music festival I’ve ever
experienced. For a start it’s the only one I’ve been to not in the UK, which means
instead of shivering your tits off in the freezing cold and crying because
you’re covered in mud and have convinced yourself you’ve developed pneumonia,
it’s warm and sunny in the day and only just about not t-shirt weather at
night. I know it’s so very English to talk about the weather, but for me this
is a real game changer. When you enter the enormous outdoor Parc del Forum and
descend down the hill, you can see the sea behind the stages and I actually
felt like I was on holiday as opposed to being there to prove my devotion to
various musical acts. I was there for that too of course. There were no queues
for wristbands and everything was just ten million times better organised than
any other festival I’ve been to. Also the atmosphere feels way less bro-ey than
Leeds Festival or like a party for drunk art students than All Tomorrow’s
Parties. I don’t know if this is because there are less English people (there
are still a lot) or because the average festival-goer’s age is a bit older.
Obviously it’s still a corporate rock festival dominated by white guitar acts
sponsored by Heineken, H & M and Ray Bans (ray bans? is it 1982?) and
probably paying its staff minimum wage, so let's not get carried away. But as those things go…
Thursday
We arrive in time to catch The Thurston Moore Band who are
disappointingly pretty good in a hypnotic My Bloody Valentine/Sonic Youth
dirgey kind of way. In fact the bass player is Debbie Googe from My Bloody
Valentine. I say disappointingly because it means I can’t legitimately refer to
them as ‘The Thurston Snore Band’ in this review but that is what we call them
privately all weekend. Still team Kim all the way.
The first of many festival
highlights comes with Antony and the
Johnsons. Antony is backed by a full orchestra consisting of members of the
Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and Catalonia National Orchestra and his voice
sounds powerful and bassy enough to send shivers right through the enormous
crowds -even me, and I’m standing pretty far away- without losing any of the
heart-stopping subtleties. Good job soundpeople. The sun sets as Antony plays
against a backdrop of a huge gothic fairytale screen whilst singing songs
mourning the destruction of the earth by human hands and evoking powerful
feminine energy. Unfortunately straight people keep making out in front of me
and partially obscuring my view, a theme of the festival. I have to keep
dodging my head to the side to avoid their Kath n Kim-esque face-slurping
obscuring the view of one of my queer/trans icons. Straights to the back! (I
know, I know I’m being binary and technically some of the people I make out
with at gigs might put me in the ‘straight’ camp, but I offer myself up now for
the scorn and disdain of any reviewers who would like to slag me off online for
doing so. Particularly if I block their view. It’s the circle of life.)
I have no idea what Sun O))) will be like, knowing only
that theirs is a name bandied around by musos as if it were gold. I watch them
from the hill and they are incredible, coming on to a stage flooded with smoke
and lights, dressed in black robes, indecipherable disturbing incantations
building as if performing an ancient ritual, their wall of sound shaking the
entire Parc del Forum. It’s so intense and unlike anything I’ve ever seen
before, it’s actually kind of upsetting to watch and that’s why it’s so
wonderful.
After Sun O))) and Antony, Electric Wizard can only be a
disappointment. Their hair metal feels uber blokey and derivative by
comparison. They have a screen up showing retro S/M porn movie visuals. I have
nothing against S/M porn and I find it hard to take their backdrop seriously
with the B-movie aesthetic, but given it’s always a maiden getting whipped by a
bunch of dudes and the fact we’re surrounded by straight white dudes fisting
the air with devotion it feels kind of uncomfortable. Electric Wizards songs themselves
are fun in a kind-of-like-Black-Sabbath-but-not-as-good way but once you’ve
heard three you’ve heard them all, so we leave after three songs.
Friday
Kathleen Hanna on TV
I keep thinking it’s Saturday as
I cannot get my head around festivals running from Thursday – Saturday instead
of Friday – Sunday. So much to unlearn. We get there for five in an
unsuccessful attempt to see C86
jangly indie legends The Pastels. We
discover that they are in a special venue and you have to queue to get special
tickets for them. We fail to do this so just go and wait for Ex Hex who are on at six. At six a band
comes on who are not Ex Hex. I don’t know who they are but unfortunately they
don’t stand a chance of receiving anything other than vitriol from me as they are
not Mary Timony & co who eventually come on at seven. Ex Hex are super fun
rock n roll, theirs being one of the few records in my collection I can
appropriately put on when I need cheering up (ironically because that is
probably about 90% of the time) and the fun rock n rollness is reproduced
pleasingly onstage. One thing that is not so pleasing is we spot the arsehole
who tried to push my friend around and call her a cunt at the London
Sleater-Kinney show in the audience. He has a disturbing number of friends and
is wearing about thirty wristbands from other indie festivals where he doubtless
went and saw all the feminist bands and called other women cunts and tried to
push them around. We hate on him from across the crowd.
Then on to Patti Smith performing ‘Horses’ (I hear a bit of The New Pornographers doing ‘Sing Me
Spanish Techno’, which they surely must have ended with, as we pass the ATP
stage, they sound great). I just watch up until ‘Break It Up’ because I want to
get a good place for Julie Ruin but Patti is predictably on great form and ‘Kimberley’
is a highlight for me, although I kind of prefer seeing her in more intimate
settings.
Julie Ruin. Kathleen’s voice is going a little (which she
attributes to an almond being stuck in her throat) but then she just sings in
her Bikini Kill voice. Bonus. She and the band all look a little nervous
playing to the enormous Primaveran crowd (apart from Kathi Wilcox who never
looks anything other than flawlessly composed) and I’m sure the throat issues
can’t help, but they give their all anyway and Kathleen closes with a cartwheel
for extra awesomeness.
I make the heteronormative
decision to go and see Belle and
Sebastian rather than Perfume Genius
as I saw PG last year and haven’t seen B & S in about twelve years. Like
most heteronormative decisions it is the wrong one. Belle and Sebastian are
pleasant but not mind-blowing. I watch most of their set in the toilet queue
which has been excellently set out so the queuers get a good view of the main
stage. I squat over a toilet rejected by the three people ahead of me, but I
don’t care. Sitting on the toilet is bad for your bowels, they must not have
gotten the memo.
Sleater-Kinney. They are wonderful and this is one of my favourite
times seeing them. There’s something special about an open-air Sleater-Kinney
show with the moon high above. Plus I’m actually in a place where I get a clear
view of them and don’t have to spend the entire gig fighting over-entitled
dickheads as I did at the most recent London show. Some of their songs I feel
as if I’m hearing for the first time, and lyrics jump out at me as they hadn’t
before. It’s a good mix of old and new material (nothing off ‘Call the Doctor’
I don’t think, but you can’t play everything). I like the latest album more and
more every time I hear them play tracks off it live. My back is aching
throughout because I’m an old man who’s been standing up all day but they are
totally worth every second of agonising pain.
Not only does my back ache, one
of my friends has hurt her foot and is limping and I’m sure my other friend has
some kind of injury too. Nonetheless she runs to see Pharmakon on the other side of the Parc Del Forum but is too late
and we all haul our aching bones over to catch Run the Jewels on the ATP stage. They bring the party with Public
Enemy-esque alternative hip hop and an attitude that at once manages to be both
bravado-ey and humble to the audience. I’m a little underwhelmed by them for
some reason but this might just be because I’m sprawled out watching them far
away from the hillside.
On our way home on the metro a
gross drunken expat in a suit slumps around the carriage before asking loudly
in English, ‘Do I have to go to Berlin to find all the cute girls?’ I call him
a prick as we get off and limp back to our apartment. Another day done and we
round off our night by Instagram-stalking our favourite bands of the day and discovering
what they’ve been doing in Barcelona. If, like me, you don’t have Instagram,
here is what you missed. Sleater-Kinney’s Janet Weiss = lots of sight-seeing +
hanging with Kathi Wilcox. Kim Gordon wasn’t there but she commented on their Instagram
thread about how it was bringing back memories. Mary Timony went to the beach.
Carrie Brownstein posed in front of a big arch which I think is probably a
famous Barcelona site about which I am ignorant. Kathleen Hanna packed her
suitcase.
Saturday
Babes and babes and babes
Noooo. The last day. And again
time to see Patti Smith. Yes, you
heard right. But this time she’s not doing ‘Horses’ and we’re in a sit-down
auditorium for which you have to queue an hour before her performance to get a
decent seat. We do and we get a good place. I really prefer this set. Amazing
as ‘Horses’ is there was something about her performing that album to such huge
crowds which seemed almost contrived comparative to this one and like I said, I
prefer intimacy. ‘Pissing in a River’ is incredible, every line rawly conveying
brutal, murky loss. ‘Because the Night’ gets everyone standing up. The boy from
the London Sleater-Kinney show is sat very near us again but Patti is so
enthralling we don’t even notice until the gap between her set and Swans who play in the auditorium after
her. Swans give a hypnotic performance. You could lose yourself in the million
layers of percussion and the fact that they look all like extras from the set
of Conan the Barbarian.
Multi-gendered Canadian hardcore
band Fucked Up are next on the list.
They’re joyous and eschew punk clichés, their keyboardist at one point getting
out a flute. OK, so frontman Damian Abraham does stage dive at the end but not
in a macho jerk way as can happen with guys in the hardcore world. He also
gives big props to Babes in Toyland which can only be a good thing. The set
feels like positive aggression which the world needs more of.
Next for something completely
different. Tori Amos. I have never
particularly been a Tori Amos fan and some of my least favourite people are big
Tori Amos fans. I’m sure some people I really like are too, but they don’t talk
about it. It’s great to come to a show with no expectations and it’s a happy
experience. I forgot how much I liked that line ‘So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts/What’s so amazing
about really deep thoughts?’ and I smile at it and then I feel old and then
I don’t care. The best thing about Tori Amos’s set is seeing all the gay boys
watching her down the front on the big screen, crying their eyes out and
singing along to every single word. I’ve seen so few queers this whole festival
compared with the endless parades of happy straight couples who like to stand
in front of me and make out whenever a band I wanna watch is on.
German pioneer industrial
experimentalists Einstürzende Neubauten
play the ATP stage after darkness. During their first song one of their members
plays a sheet of shiny ripped up paper and progresses throughout the set to
eventually ‘play’ a makeshift skip, emptying out metal rods onto the stage
whilst the drummer drums with what look like a set of drainpipes, but don’t
worry, Stomp! it ain’t. It’s not even
a challenge to listen to as one may expect of an experimental band who use an
entire arsenal of Blue Peter props to make a noise. The sound is still cold but
their show is surprisingly warm. Lead singer Blixa Bargeld has a bit of a count
Dracula look to him these days but is actually very sweet. ‘You know we love
playing here, don’t you?’ he says quietly and sincerely, like a father telling
his child, ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’
Babes in Toyland end the festival, for me at least, I didn’t have
the energy to party till dawn this year, which I kind of regret now, but what can
you do? BiT are wonderful, emotionally-involving and intense. Kat Bjelland
freaks out and looks upset for the first few songs due to technical/guitar
issues. It’s actually a bit uncomfortable to watch her to begin with, yet BiT
still manage to be captivating, the sense of urgency to the music coming out
possibly more in Kat’s state of anxiety. I still can’t help but grin from ear
to ear as they play a storming set. I feel bad for Kat nonetheless - she’s not
having the awesome time her fans are. Drummer Lori Barbero holds things
together by telling jokes between songs when it gets awkward. Then Kat’s guitar
problems get fixed and she is like a child at Christmas, the whole atmosphere
changing. I can see that she is still somewhat ill at ease but surely ill-at-easeness
is where Babes in Toyland’s music comes from. Their riffs and Kat’s powerful
vocals reverberate through my ears and into my heart where they shall remain. I
miss Shellac and Underworld but no one would top Babes
in Toyland for a festival closer. The rest of life was a disappointment from
thereon in. Good night.
