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You know that you’re asking for trouble when you decide to brand your annual festival as #bestfestivalever, but Primavera Sound organization seem to have nailed it this year, proving all the rumours of the decline of one of the better organized festivals in Europe wrong. The Barcelona leg of the Primavera Sound 2013 reads like a who’s who of the current alternative scene, but given the almost-too-much-to-handle numbers attending over the weekend (talks of a quarter of a million people are soon confirmed) which in the previous years have made the walk from one stage to the other as easy as climbing mountains, we decide to opt for the “lil’ bro”, Optimus Primavera Sound, running in Porto for the second year. We may have lost the Coachella-style Ferris wheel and The Knife’s contemporary dance performance (and playback), but we definitely won an atmosphere of enveloping relaxation that reigns in these areas even in the wilder audiences. So this is the story of how we learnt to love Optimus Primavera Sound in three days.
May 30th, Day 1: It is an unusual cold day in Porto, but the festival opens in the cosiest possible ways, with shows only on the two main stages, which, running side by side, make it possible to watch every single gig. Merchandise are not necessarily the best of choices, as their almost goth take on new wave falls a bit flat in the light of the day. Wild Nothing fares much better, as Jack Tatum’s dream pop seems to be designed to soundtrack sunsets, with tracks from the second album “Nocturne” and new e.p. “Empty Estate” gaining more confidence when played live with a definite nod towards dancier paths; we think of The Field Mice, and that can only be a good thing. The real surprise comes from The Breeders, here to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of “Last Splash”; they decide to play it every track (and a few b-sides at the end) in the same way that the album is sequenced, which means that their massive hit Cannonball is apparently wasted in the first five minutes; a bold move which soon turns into a collective singalong, reminding us how incredibly eclectic their songs are, too catchy to be indie-rock, too weird to be just pop. Kim Deal smiles humbly and the audience reciprocates with the enthusiasm of those who recognize that some things never get old. The night belongs to Nick Cave (and the Bad Seeds), here is his magnificent Hellish Presley persona: the only risk he takes is being balanced for over half of his set onto the first row of the crowd, while he goes clearly for a greatest hits type of show, from the sulphuric Red Right Hand, to the expressive violence of Tupelo or the elegiac The Weeping Song. No one complains; we want From Her To Eternity and we get it. We have never seen Deerhunter so angry and yet so playful; it could be the fuller sound of the now five-some or the classic garage’n’roll status of their latest work “Monomania”, Bradford Cox travels for over an hour through what is quickly becoming the most impressive catalogue of any American band in the last ten years. They start with Cover Me and end in pure noise.
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May 31st, Day 2: For quite obvious reasons, the busiest day of the festival. Neko Case jokes about the fact that everytime she finishes a song you can start hearing again OM’s drones, but for a woman which seems to be at ease in Virginia’s filthiest bars, background noise should not be too much trouble. Playing mostly songs from her new album, out in a few months’ time, she doesn’t seem to give up the title of country noir queen yet. Grizzly Bear, great in the studio but slightly too narcoleptic on stage, are easily upstaged by Local Natives and their perfect blending of polyrhythms and harmonies, showing that the best tracks of “Hummingbird” can keep the soaring choruses and subtle nuances even in bigger arenas. We should have gone to see Metz instead of enduring Four Tet’s technified set, but all is forgotten when Blur come up on stage to the biggest roar, which gives Damon the biggest grin of the evening. They must feel like on a mission to prove they were indeed the best pop band of the ’90s and by playing Girls and Boys, Popscene and There’s No Other Way as their first three numbers, the victory is theirs. Damon jumps in the crowd, steals one of the daisy chains given in the afternoon to the arriving girls, and sings along a crowd, most of which seems to be as old as “Leisure”. Of course they play Parklife, Coffe + Tv, The Universal, This Is A Low, For Tomorrow…but Song 2 is “almost” left out, until appearing as the final number of the encores, introduced by Damon shouting “Time to party!”. You can easily guess what happened next. Almost on our way home, Glass Candy offer themselves like a sugar coated Crystal Castles, slinky and seductive on the outside, but just as sinister at their core.
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June 1st, Day 3: or the loudest day of the festival. Dinosaur Jr. are as ear threatening as their face precedes them, but they never sounded (or in Lou Barlow’s case, looked) so young, as they tear through FreakScene, The Wagon, Chunks (with a guest appearance from Fucked Up’s Damian Abraham) and the still sublime rendition of Just Like Heaven. Savages, which we already thought a precise metal machine when we saw them in London almost a year ago, seem to have, if possible, refined their art. There’s a rising backlash against them (stating that there’s nothing savage about them) which tonight’s show is willing to fight: it’s not about the influences, it’s what you do with them and She Will, City’s Full, Husbands grab you with an intensity that you feel in your stomach, well before than in your head. Closing with the anthemic but still unreleased Don’t Let The Fuckers Get You Down, Jenny Beth cracks a smile and that is probably the best signal of what is yet to come, a band free from the pressure of the hype that’s been built around them and (whisper it) ready to embrace some light. My Bloody Valentine are somehow a very different band from the one that we saw at Primavera three years ago: Kevin Shields, ever the perfectionist, doesn’t need to check every guitar for what seems like hours while they’re onstage and Bilinda Butcher is actually smiling in high heels; far from it being a more relaxed set, they go for the more aggressive material from “Isn’t Anything” rather than “Loveless”, with the new material from “mbv” (Only Tomorrow, In Another Way) sitting comfortably between. Getting rawer and murkier by the minute, they inevitably close with You Made Me Realise, stretched in its central section to the point of audio exhaustion: thousands of ears are transfixed. We manage to get only the last few songs of Fucked Up’s set. But the sweat, oh the sweat.
File this festival under #bestkeptsecret. Though, unfortunately, not for long.
Vê-lo no próximo ano, Porto.
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