- It was tough not to think of this year's edition of Primavera Sound as being ill-fated from the moment, back in May, when an inflamed vocal cord nodule forced Saturday headliner Bjork to cancel. Where Sonar Sao Paolo managed to replace her with Kraftwerk, Primavera installed Saint Etienne in her place—a beloved and wonderful band, for sure, but hardly a comparable box-office draw. With further cancellations by El-P, The Melvins and Sleep also disrupting things and ticket sales presumably hit to some degree by the flailing Spanish economy, it was possible that this, the twelfth edition of Primavera Sound, would be one to forget.
Photo credit: Diariopop
On Thursday my festival began with a teatime revelation on the Pitchfork Stage in the shape of Edmonton boy-girl duo Purity Ring. Recent signings to 4AD, vocalist Megan James and knob-twiddler/percussionist Corin Roddick have expressed mild irritation of late at comparisons with The Knife, but let's not let that stop us doing it here. James' modulated, filtered vocals and Roddick's woozy electronics and deliciously clean, glacial percussion are undoubtedly reminiscent of the Swedish duo to an extent, though their contention that recent hip-hop is just as profound an influence is certainly valid. Whoever their influences, Purity Ring are creating something hugely compelling out of them, and were still causing shivers to rocket up my spine 15 minutes after their set finished.
There followed a brief but enjoyable detour to the Ray-Ban Stage for recently reformed mid-'90s US indie quartet Archers of Loaf, after which a gigantic crowd assembled at the Pitchfork Stage for much-hyped Canadian indie electro ingénue Claire Boucher, AKA Grimes. Early sound problems never really cleared up, but the sheer quality of tracks such as "Genesis" and "Oblivion" along with the Boucher's inherently lovable stage persona, carried the day, no matter how firmly she might cause the words "hipster" and "Enya" to lodge in my head.
Photo credit: cantalalala
Inevitable shouts of "guapa" greeted the arrival of eternally fragrant Mazzy Star front woman Hope Sandoval on the Ray-Ban Stage next. Back after a 15-year hiatus, Sandoval and core partner David Roback have a new record out this year for which this show left me extremely hopeful, the new material slotting seamlessly in next to the dreamy '90s alt-rock likes of "Fade Into You" and "Blue Flower." The xx were next up on the (actually very large) Mini Stage, playing much of their first album and previewing parts of their upcoming second long-player, which on this evidence will splice the mood and mores of their debut with Jamie xx's fearless dance music explorations. This was their first festival show in two years and it was a thing of some beauty.
Although the placid, gorgeous sets of Mazzy Star and The xx were excellent, it was getting to the stage of the evening at which dancing becomes useful in warding off thoughts of sleep. An invigorating half-hour of Franz Ferdinand on the San Miguel stage proved a timely tonic, with highlights being a tribute cover of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" and the usual Primavera treat of hearing UK pop standards belted out by thousands of thickly Catalan and Spanish-accented voices.
Next up was The Field live on the Pitchfork stage, but, as mesmeric as Axel Willner and his two-piece band were as they revisited last album Looping State of Mind and classics like "Over the Ice," I have been more moved by them in a smaller-scale club environment, so near the end of their set we drifted over to a packed Ray-Ban Stage to catch the final few songs of Catalan producer John Talabot's first-ever live show. Performing with regular collaborator Pional on what, thanks to its relatively enclosed design, is undoubtedly the most atmospheric of Primavera's stages, Talabot was clearly at the end of a triumphant first live foray, with glorious set closer "Destiny" a painful hint at what we had missed.
Photo credit: scanner.fm
Friday's festivities began with polite and proficient Swedish shoegazers I Break Horses wearing their My Bloody Valentine influences on their sleeves at the ATP Stage to noisily soothing effect. Bjork's cancellation left The Cure as Primavera 2012's undisputed premier draws, as evidenced by noticeably higher footfall at the Parc del Forum on Friday—they started at just after 10 PM on the San Miguel Stage—than on other days. Kicking off with "Plainsong" from 1989's sublime Disintegration album, Robert Smith and band played every classic that could reasonably have been expected, with "Pictures of You," "Inbetween Days," "Just Like Heaven," "A Forest" and, of course, "Friday I'm In Love" all making appearances. A set time that surely even The Cure themselves must have found a mite elongated (almost three hours, 36 songs and three encores), did mean that even a canon as glittering as theirs had to be padded out with the odd late '90s album track, but after a set jammed with this many memorable moments it would be churlish to grumble too much.
As if to keep the theme of epic romance going, M83 played next down on the Mini Stage. The lushness and complexity of Anthony Gonzalez's live shows seems to increase with each passing album, and the grandly ambitious Hurry Up, We're Dreaming double-LP has unsurprisingly proved no exception. He and his band swept us through the choicest moments of that record along with the four LPs before that, with an unexpected, retooled version of "Sitting" from his 2001 debut a particular high point. Gonzalez also cut one of the most endearingly grateful and genuine stage figures I've ever seen at a festival, the Frenchman almost tripping over his between-song words in an effort to adequately thank the crowd. It all added up to one of the feel-good sets of the weekend.
Photo credit: cantalalala
Keeping energy levels up on the San Miguel Stage next were The Rapture: probably as sure a guarantee of good times as exists on any festival bill these days. Nothing much ever seems to change in The Rapture's universe—I sometimes get the feeling Vito Roccaforte will be yelping and hammering a cowbell to a bunch of wolves and cockroaches come the apocalypse—but with this potent an ability to induce both grinning and dancing at will, why would you want anything to change?
"This scene always makes me feel so old," a friend in his mid-20s remarked as Benga moved through the gears on the Ray-Ban Stage next, and, as MC Youngman posited the suggestion that we were "making history tonight," it was easy to see what he meant. This was a masterful hour-and-a-half of dubstep, however, the cringy MC-isms adding a welcome note of hilarity to the thundering bass. That just left Vito de Luca, AKA Aeroplane, to take up DJ duties for the last couple of hours, his silky-smooth set of nu-disco being just the not-too-challenging thing to keep us happy and dancing as the sun rose.
Photo credit: Sarah Luv
Saturday was largely spent at and around the Pitchfork Stage, with Deerhunter main man Bradford Cox's woozy Atlas Sound project proving a pleasant enough early evening distraction. New Jersey sextet Real Estate were next up, playing from 2001's much-garlanded Days LP. Italians Do It Better-signed Chromatics then followed, their super-slick synth-pop freshly propelled to (slightly greater) prominence by the inclusion of "Tick of the Clock" on Cliff Martinez's Drive soundtrack. This type of music feels decadently right in the balmy climes of Primavera in the evening, and closing covers of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)" added mass-recognition to what had already been a fabulous set.
I approached The Weeknd's first-ever European show, again on the Pitchfork Stage, with some trepidation, having been warned that his voice had a tendency to crack when playing live. I noticed no such problems, however, as Abel Tesfaye led his band though "Life of the Party", "Lonely Star" and the beloved Michael Jackson cover "Dirty Diana" in front of a heaving crowd.
Photo credit: Diariopop
Group consensus then took us to the San Miguel Stage to see Justice's live show. I quite enjoyed the duo's Paris noise schtick for about ten minutes in 2006 and have completely ignored them ever since, so I took this as an opportunity to gauge how much they had progressed in the intervening years. The answer, for anyone in the same position, is "they haven't." Same messianic stage set, same binding black leather jackets and (largely) the same tracks; the best I can say is that it was a reasonable late-festival bounce-about.
That just left the estimable selection of DJs lined up for the Numbers Showcase to close things out to an alternately exhausted and wild-eyed 3 AM to 6 AM crowd at the Pitchfork Stage. Spencer, Oneman, Redinho and Deadboy kept things rumbling nicely before Jackmaster's reliably party-centric sensibilities took over for the final hour to keep weary limbs moving until breakfast, which was eaten and drunk safe in the knowledge that, big-name cancellations or not, Primavera Sound is still as unmissable as ever.