Primavera Sound

A Primavera Sound wristband grants you entry to a beachside festival site which hosts one of the greatest line-ups of the year, gigs across Barcelona’s best venues and the opportunity to make friends with people who know more about Pere Ubu than Pendulum.

So if you’re reading this, it’s likely that you either attend the festival every year, you’ve been before and you regret not doing it this year or you’ve never been but you’ve always been tempted. We’d like to wholeheartedly confirm the hype. It’s worth making this an annual ritual, you missed out if you didn’t make it this year and if you’ve never been, you should give next year some serious consideration. Here’s a run down of the highlights of Crack’s Primavera 2014.

Wednesday

Primavera’s rep as one of the institutions responsible for generating and satisfying large-scale demand for what would otherwise be peripheral music presents itself on Wednesday night, when our attempts to see Shellac are stifled by the sight of an enormous crowd spilling out of the doors of the BARTS venue and onto the street. And even though the long-suffering staff are trying to tell the throng that capacity is full to the brim, everyone seems prepared to wait in the rain for a chance of getting inside. Fortunately, the Apollo is situated directly opposite, and we slip in in time to see The Brian Jonestown Massacre deliver an immaculate set in the packed, red-lit venue, populated with a healthy proportion of under 25s who seem to know every lyric. The number of crowd members who own a copy of Dig is made clear by the chaos-encouraging jeers when Anton Newcombe orders the band to stop mid-song. No punch-ups ensue, however, and the band resume their set of anthemic, trend-defying psych-rock.

Thursday

Thankfully the sun is back out, and while the appeal of Real Estate’s music is that it makes you feel nostalgic for a suburban summer you probably never had (the aroma of freshly cut lawns, trips to the lake with your first love interest and the sound of crickets chirping at night), it turns out their jangly indie pop works pretty fucking well when it’s played on an outdoor stage by the beach on Barcelona too. But our sense of tranquility is soon blown away by the immense power of the longstanding Dutch punk experimentalists and three-quarter-length short wearers The Ex. Tying themselves up in knots of polyrhythmic madness before bursting into frenzied walls of noise with a level of precision which proves a telepathic union, there’s simply no words in the English language hyperbolic enough to describe how awesome these guys are live.

Once The Ex’s rally cry Theme From Konono signifies the sundown, we check out Brookyn outfit Antibalas, whose 70s-inspired afrobeat has the crowd at the Ray-Ban Stage going nuts. As we’ll learn during veteran soulman Charles Bradley and self-proclaimed ‘International Mother Fucker’ Seun Kuti’s sets later during the festival, it’s actually this stage which seems to generate the best party atmosphere on the whole site. It also turns out that having the colossal Heineken and Sony stages facing each is pretty handy, because it feels like all we have to do after chugging lager and grunting with approval to Queens Of the Stone Age’s set is turn 180 degrees and suddenly we’re all hugging and pouring our hearts out during Arcade Fire’s euphoric rendition of Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels).

Primavera’s nocturnal schedule lends itself well to the dance-orientated artists on the bill, and our old friend Julio Bashmore sees the crowd for his 3:00-5:30am DJ set gradually build up before he lets us drink in his greenroom until the hotels begin serving up breakfast. The staff at our accommodation politely decline to hand over the roof terrace keys for our impromptu pool party and, in hindsight, we’d like to thank them for it.

Friday 

Every festival line-up has its main ‘talking point’, and the expectations of FKA Twigs’ show are so high that there’s a palpable sense of nervous excitement in the crowd before she arrives on stage. After two EPs, a series of jaw-dropping music videos and only a handful of live performances, Twigs has caused a seismic wave in the music industry, who aren’t just hoping for a unique artist, they’re hoping for a new female icon who will redefine beauty and creatively break into uncharted territory. And, you know what? The performance is perfect. Backed by a three piece band, the music is sultry, sparse and intense, while Twigs’ dancing and siren-like voice magnetises the crowd’s attention so much that it momentarily feels like the rest of the planet has disappeared. ‘I was so nervous, I was like ‘what if no one turns up?’’, she claims, and the crowd can’t help but laugh.

It feels like there’s always someone waiting around to criticise Pixies’ post-reformation career. OK, so the new album isn’t exactly Surfer Rosa, no one can replace Kim Deal and they’re obviously making it rain. But if you don’t recognise the perverse beauty of thousands of people screaming lyrics about dissected eyeballs and cheering with joy while Joey Santiago plays a feedback-drenched solo with a guitar stand on a warm night in Spain, then you’ve got a heart of fucking stone and we’re probably not going to be mates. And, for gossip’s sake, we can confirm that Paz nails Deal’s harmonies while looking deadly cool in her all-black outfit and flowers tucked into the head of her bass. Another act who shun the notion that band reformations are little more than soulless cash-ins is Slint, who perform songs from their recently reissued, understated masterpiece Spiderland to a deservedly huge audience possibly for the first time since they were recorded in 1990. Sat down and sage-like for most of the set, they don’t play a note out of place, and the crowd bond over the songs they’ve probably all listened to alone during anxiety-induced spells of insomnia. This is cool. And although dancing is the last thing we feel like doing after their set, Darkside’s big drops, when followed by the duo’s beautifully orchestrated exercises in restraint, have the power to cause mass hysteria, and it’s impossible to resist.

Saturday 

“Crack-a-lacking, like snap, crackle, popping your ammo off”, Earl Sweatshirt spits on the Pitchfork stage with a welcomed aggression that’s unlike the sunken-eyed slur that he rapped with on his album. He’s clearly having fun, and it’s like as if he’s overcome the self-deprecation to become a confident, crowd-rousing performer, all that initial sensationalism – the mysterious absence and the subsequent ‘Free Earl’ campaign, the controversy-stirring lyricism and the thinkpieces obsessing over it – feels distantly in the past. Speaking of lyrically gifted but vertically-challenged rappers, Kendrick Lamar’s show over at the Heineken stage is a blast. 99.967% of the time, hip-hop backing bands are just too cheesy to handle, but actually, these guys give the well-worn good kid material more heft and flexibility, and his guitarist’s decision to wear a Barcelona shirt is a nice touch too. 

And after we witness a performance from Blood Orange that’s so passionate, fun and immaculate sounding that we regret ever grumbling about some of his songs sounding like George Michael, we select the eternally epic soundscapes of Mogwai to soundtrack the finale of our week. As the final chords melt, it’s time to head back to the hotel before a 7am flight. And during the 90 minutes we spend doing something that vaguely resembles sleep, it’s painful to think about all the music we missed out on at the site. Such is the insanely appealing, relentless nature of Primavera Sound.

Photography: Jake Applebee, Dani Canto & Eric Pamies