The first day of the premiere of the Primavera Sound festival in São Paulo ended with an undeniable success with the public (55,000 attendees) and with great artistic satisfaction. And if you have to go by the reaction of the crowd in attendance last Saturday, the poster was a complete success.
The presence of some undisputed headliners with different profiles was already a guarantee that an audience of varied tastes would come together. With Arctic Monkeys, Björk, Interpol, Travis Scott or Beach House sharing the limelight with idols from the Brazilian scene like Liniker or L7Non, the pull was guaranteed.
The first appreciation is indisputably that it is a hobby that shows his taste for music, his enjoyment of it and above all his knowledge. And although they are almost opposite genders, the feeling is of an almost innate predisposition to a date like this.
And it also translated on that opening day in that despite the large influx of public -including the two stages located in the Oscar Niemeyer sambodrome-, and especially the queues derived, for example, from cashless payment, the traffic was fluid and the crowds were not overwhelming.
In the strictly musical field, the day started precisely with a Spanish band, the Carolina Durante, who showed conviction and adaptability before a knowledgeable but not very abundant public. The day closed in charge of a session of the Catalan John Talabot.
The one who did leave a notable good taste in the mouth was Amaia, who, although she performed at a time as difficult as three in the afternoon, showed that she has a repertoire, a well-oiled band with Miquel Sospedra and others and, above all, a frankly remarkable stage control.
His current proposal has evolved and can be rubbed shoulders with no problem in global calls like this one. His performance was interrupted towards the end when he fainted slightly due to low blood pressure, although after a few minutes he finished off a splendid job and as if nothing had happened with the hit El Encuentro.
Also of Spanish origin but with a very different denomination of origin were Los Planetas, a reference that is not strange in the history of Primavera Sound and that on Saturday debuted on Brazilian stages before a very respectable little boy. That was not an obstacle for the Granada group's turbo not to drop in revolutions, driven as always by Eric Jiménez's battery.
Their leader Jota had problems with the sound during the first songs, something that he manifested clearly, although in the end he rewarded with a magnificent version of Islamabad, with his unique voice.
In international arenas, the consecration of the Arctic Monkeys with their recent album The car and Björk's plunge into orchestral accompaniment, as well as her new album Fossora, were the hot spots. The Icelandic artist has opted for this format in the festival's three Latin American concerts (São Paulo and next week Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile), working with a local orchestra
In the case of last Saturday, she did it with the Fundação Bachiana Filarmônica, and she dressed in her style, on this occasion shiny latex, and on top of it some red and green fabrics, a black inflatable scarf and a metallic mask. At his concert he had asked not to take photos or use cell phones, and musically he played something from his new album (such as Ovule ), but above all they focused on rereading his songs from the past, some already glorious such as Isobel, Jóga or Hyperballad .
For encores, also the preterites Notget and Pluto. Although in the first part of the concert the orchestra sounded distant compared to the amplification of his voice, later they formed a unit, flexible but always present as a formidable sound cushion.
The American Arctic Monkeys also looked to the past, with their singer Alex Turner as a star, with pants, a jacket and dark glasses. They opened with Sculptures of anything goes and for the next hour and a half they interspersed emblematic songs from their repertoire and some unreleased ones.
But above all they showed themselves as a band of flesh and blood, which dominates the stage like few others today with its charm, but above all with some songs that the mass audience (since the stage is on an avenue with trees, some addicts climbed on to them to better see the concert creating a curious image) cheered and sang in a very devoted way.
The Brazilian proposals, one of the axes of the cartel, also had their logical role. Perhaps one of the most attractive aroused on the day of the premiere was that of Liniker, a singer with a powerful voice and presence who offered soul, r'n'n and funk with a lot of muscle, as well as some incursion into local rhythm.
A referential trans woman, her massive performance motivated the presence of a large homosexual and trans public, a fact that was repeated in other concerts offered by emblematic artists in this field, such as that of the Iranian-Dutch Sevdaliza a few hours later.
