066/ Who we saw at Primavera Sound
I just clipped off the PVS wristband, a far better few days’ music than last year. Still omissions, either via clashes or tiredness, but we nailed the key things we wanted to see. Knackered now. For no reason, this is in chronological order...
(a bit of) Llum
Spanish electro pop, probably quite good. Perhaps unfairly, turned off by the old school ness of it all.
Hinds
The Madrid-bass quartet are less edgy than I remember, still very fun spicy garage pop, they cover Charli XCX and The Clash.
La Casa Azul
Keytar! (though not played live I suspect, it felt more of a prop). Hi-nrg disco pop, a less knowing Confidence Man, or say if Right Said Fred had gone on to have a longer career like the Pet Shop Boys. That sounds worse than it was.
Caribou
Wonderful set from the baldy beatmaster. I love this workmanlike live band approach to dance music, as if they’re all technicians at some big machine. Antishowbiz.
Cassandra Jenkins
Downtempo alt/pop in a Sharon Van Etten vein, beautiful voice, but I’m a bit disappointed with the basic-ness of songs themselves. She’s clearly a talent but maybe in a more outright ‘pop’ way than I want from this kind of artist.
CMAT
Majestic, spine-tingling. Top three set of the weekend, I knew she’d be great fun but this is ridiculous — and I think the single greatest crowd reaction we’ve ever seen on Cupra Stage (which is the best stage) since we started coming in 2019. Half of Ireland down the front. First of many “free Palestine!” shoutouts.
(a bit of) Magdalena Bay
Interesting hyperpop-ish showbiz, meets odd chanteuse, a tiny bit Caroline Polachek, without the vocal gymnastics. Need to check out.
This Is Lorelei
Oddball but in a great way: Nate Amos (from the band Water From Your Eyes) is laconic and diffident, smokes a cigarette while singing, stood basically stock still, also often allowing vocal samples to do the work instead. He’s apparently taking his fecund music-making in a more focused, career-conscious direction, since getting sober. Katie Crutchfield (who did similar of course) is a fan and MJ Lenderman recently collaborated on a song. Amos’ live rhythm section (playing over taped stuff) are more conventional indie — the bassist sways as she plays, as if in a different world, distant on the far side of the stage, which feels, says Rifa, like she’s a ghost.
Jamie XX
I really try this time. It’s just boring.
Charli XCX & Troye Sivan present: Sweat
Of course she’s outstanding, brilliant, immense raw punk energy, etc etc, everything you want — and as an imperious curator, Charli knows exactly how to generate viral moments, the real currency of modern pop stardom. More than songs, probably. Likely, nothing will be more widely remembered from Primavera Sound 2025 than Chappell Roan popping up on the big screens, stage-side, doing the ‘Apple’ dance. However, the Sweat show intersperses Charli with Troye Sivan, who is, well, he’s pretty good, if he wasn’t getting between us and more Charli. He’s languid, sexy but not pushy, fairly conventional choreo (quite Beiber-like, if it wasn’t all so overtly gay and horny) but basically a step down in energy. His are the bits where people talk, go to the bar, decide to leave altogether. Probably this shared tour show from last year — where they play short chunks of two or three solo songs back-to-back — before colliding and overlapping a bit more near the end, made more sense as a USA arena tour to combine their cult fanbases, booked before Charli jumped a couple of levels to her Brat imperial phase. So now it’s like, whoah, here’s three world-shaking bangers, uh, and now here’s a couple of old Sivan songs that you half-remember, like, when is Charli coming back on?
Feeble Little Horse
First ever European gig, jetlagged they say, perhaps too low energy (not great sound) and too big a stage for them early doors, but still FLH unfurl beautifully, a very good band in the making.
Waxahatchee
Total magic. She forgot to do her ‘throw the baseball cap’ thing (or maybe she’s retired it). Jake Lenderman steps up for smashing tilts at ‘Right Back To It’ and ‘Burns Out At Midnight’. It’s a surprisingly big crowd. Also, Crutchfield’s country-rock phase songs are perfect in tone for a gorgeous Mediterranean afternoon.
Wolf Alice
Was willing them on, weird to see WA as a huge ‘production’ band now: they distinctly don’t ROCK anymore — it’s far too controlled and honed for my taste but still good-hearted stuff.
Haim
I’d like to have liked this one, we worked our way forwards, there are definitely Haim songs we dig, but… it’s very insubstantial and gets boring fast. A few songs in and already feels like they’re getting away with production tricks and solid crowdwork, rather than taking us anywhere. I actually preferred watching them at Radio 1’s Big Weekend on telly, battling with the pouring rain. Perhaps Haim need more adversity to shine.
Stereolab
Much better than expected. Good sound helps. Letitia on jazz trombone is top entertainment.
TV On The Radio
Biggest positive surprise of the weekend. They weren’t on my ‘to do’ list, I’ve never seen them live, wouldn’t consider myself a fan. Though I’ve always vaguely respected what they do, it’s left me cold. Until today. We’re literally walking past five minutes before they’re due on and need a sit-down to eat empanadas and drink Aperol Spritz. Then: fuck, this makes so much sense, they smash the house to pieces. Big riffs, hyper intelligent structure, interesting vocal interplay delivering good lyrics, dynamic shifts, sonic experiments that don’t derail the energy. Everything. Love it.
The Jesus Lizard
Really, really good… ferocious of course, yet still a tiny bit disappointing. My fault, not theirs: I’ve allowed expectation to get away from me — and we missed Sabrina for them. Also, I think the weekend is already shaping up into one where the finest sets drive a resurgence in connection and community between artist and audience (CMAT, Waxahatchee, TVOTR, Chappell). But of course, Yow’s visceral, confrontational schtick (yeah, still super thrilling) is never going to work, in that broader uplifting context. He’s in great shape though. I’m not saying it’s bad at all. Need to see them indoors, somewhere cold and miserable, with real life piling on, instead of as part of summer hols! One neat thing: The Jesus Lizard are now my band with the longest gap between live shows. I last saw them in (I think) 1994, at Sheffield Leadmill, so that’s two gigs 31 years apart. Fuck.
Wet Leg
It’s an eye-opening buzz how effectively Wet Leg has developed into a major headlining outfit. This is a big, big show, yet doesn’t lose the energy, nor the personality of those early tour dates, when they were already out on the road and broke unexpectedly through, via that debut single being a career definer. Possibly, my heart doesn’t love them quite as much as it did back then, in their “pre in-ear monitoring, still shocked by fame, haven’t stopped for breath yet” era. HOWEVER the mild restructure (more of a band, Hester back among the players, buffed up Rhian taking on the full weight of fronting this juggernaut) is fucking ferocious.
Floating Points
Just sublime. I didn’t imagine any electro outfit would trump Dan Snaith’s Caribou set this weekend (anyway, they’re different enough it’s not a contest) but Sam Shepherd’s Floating Points are utterly mesmerising. Also, easily the lightshow of the weekend: psychedelic swirling multi-coloured sparkles, ebbing and flowing, which it turns out are being created live, analogue, onstage, by the visual artist Akiko Nakayama. She uses a layer of liquid soap and different types of paint and ink, which she drips with pipettes onto a moveable glass canvas directly beneath a camera. Cleverly, they let this unfold on the big screens for several songs, before showing us what’s actually going on. It brings a science-y jag as well as an arty one, which is a spot on complement for the actual music.
(a bit of) Dehd
Very good fun, don’t know their stuff but killer songs, she can sing — need to check out properly.
Horsegirl
We chose Horsegirl over Christian Lee Hutson and Kim Deal, so there was a bit of pressure, but I didn’t regret it. A twenty-first century take on Sebadoh and Yo La Tengo, with a deft balance of slacker and fizz.
Los Campesinos!
We stick around the small dockside stages after Horsegirl and Dehd to see what this slightly counter-intuitive booking of the (phenomenal, long-running Welsh radical) outsider indie/progsters might bring. And it’s very rewarding indeed: they are absolutely stoked to be there, with both a loyal crowd (no, not just Welsh people) and also they’re fiery enough — immediately impactful enough — to keep many people down here, who might otherwise have fucked off to Black Country, New Road for example. What a journey this band has been on to find themselves at PVS for the first time after an almost 20 year career on, not quite the fringes, but certainly erring more DIY than mainstream industry. Loads of righteous politics. Briefly I wonder sadly how my own music career led to the friendships it did, yet not friendship or touring or anything with this mob. We’d’ve been well suited, I like to imagine.
Fontaines DC
Again, it’s a touch bemusing to see this sort of basic alt-rock outfit in such an exulted position, putting on a full production show on a big stage and loads of people knowing all their material. Material I don’t know well enough, though it rollicks along. That sounds patronising. Obviously big props to Fontaines’ high profile, unwavering Gaza solidarity, expressed in a meaningful way towards the climax of the gig, which includes wholesale lighting and production in Palestinian colours. I liked the first album a lot but never followed up. I bet if I dig into the most recent record, I’ll become a fan again, knowing they’re (at least on that issue) fellow travellers. As they perform, Greta Thunberg is onboard that aid ship Madleen Gaza, part of the ‘Freedom Flotilla’, trying to get food and medicines through Israel’s naval blockade, and she’s wearing a Fontaines tshirt.
Chappell Roan
Let’s end with a monumental wellspring of joy. These songs — these world class bangeroos — where you think you’re done, then there’s at least two more where you know most of the words. Second album not even out and Roan has half a dozen of the kind of lasting classics that many great, great artists only ever have one or two of, across their whole career, if they’re lucky. Also, it’s just extraordinary how great Roan is (already!) at keeping on top of a vast audience like this. What feels like 70,000 people or something. Easily the biggest crowd of the weekend — I reckon the biggest I’ve seen at a PVS. Like, it felt double the size of Dua Lipa’s party at the height of the Future Nostalgia campaign. This is not exactly a hot take but if she can continue to manage burnout and the toxic industry, surely Chappell Roan has everything — everything — she needs to be one of the world’s very biggest music stars for the coming decade. This overwhelming large-scale festival experience feels more akin to seeing one of the great 1980s stadium pop redefiners (Madonna, Prince, sort of Bruce, Queen or Wacko Jacko) than seeing one of her contemporaries today. Roan’s entire whole thing has that self-abandoning, radically uplifting, ‘gathering’ kind of singalong, from first moment to last.
In theory, I could say too many ballads. Yet they all land, without question. In theory, I could say the heavy metal pastiche song is dumb and annoying, but it just doesn’t matter, because you’re so busy being blown away by her live band and the sheer fun of it all. In theory, I could argue all this Dungeons and Dragons maximalism is a waste when the material is so strong. But why be a churlish tit and deny playful imagination, when the budget allows for it? I spend large parts of the set choked up.
My cunning plan was to take R back to the hotel, chill for an hour, then come back out again, probably alone, for the second half of LCD Soundsystem and — more importantly — for Turnstile. Last year this trick worked and we both went back out again. Back in the room, though, no way.
icymi —
• Thanks very much Matt White, who made a Tidal playlist of my DJ set from The Young’Uns show. The only change is he’s used Pete Seeger’s original of ‘Coyote’ instead of the Mitski cover version, which isn’t on Tidal. Really appreciate that Matt, nice one. I don’t have Tidal (I’m, erm, ‘between’ music streaming services) and you’ve made me consider it.
• This’ll be super fun: Five Years of Folklore, a celebration of Taylor Swift going folkie, various singers perform the album in full, corralled by Roxanne de Bastion. It’s at The Green Note on Thursday 24th July. I’ll be there.
• Liz Stokes of The Beths does a lovely acoustic version of their current single ‘Metal’ for RNZ Music.