Second consecutive weekend of the Primavera Sound festival at the Parc del Fòrum. That doesn't mean that things were quiet in between, but rather the opposite: 14 halls and spaces scattered around the urban map have been hosting for five endless days of concerts, starring artists who repeated at the festival itself or who performed exclusively there.
The collateral result, as expected, were the usual queues in front of these premises, which in turn has generated daily protests throughout the week by those who were left without entering despite having a season ticket. Something, by the way, that was known in advance, where the order of signing up for the concert in advance prevailed.
In this state of affairs, the start of the second weekend, with summer temperatures and everything running more smoothly and, therefore, efficiently. With the exception (mecachis, as one would say in the past) of the news made public mid-morning by the organization that the capacity for the farewell day on the beach – Brunch on the Beach – was full. Again, the angry protests through social networks were immediate. For example, the Primaverasucks collective yesterday asked for support on the platforms to initiate legal action against the organization, while some neighborhood collective threatened the same but for noise and dirt.
Also on the extra-musical scene yesterday, the substitution of the poster in which Ada Colau and Isabel Díaz Ayuso kissed, emulating Brezhnev and Honecker, for another of some grey-haired Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, drew powerful attention. It seems that that initial poster aroused the angry protest of the mayor.
And meanwhile, music rocked it again yesterday, with names like the New York band Interpol, an iconic reference of that music scene at the turn of the millennium, and whose rock interpretation has unquestionable validity and its best-known songs (Evil) have become true classics. They opened with Untitled and continued with a fortnight of cuts, including two songs from their next album, Fables and Toni.
It was an excellent contrast to enjoy the art of Paul Banks and company and having done it before with a high draft British double helping. On the one hand, the download of the Squid, that is to say, the Brighton band that twenty years after their debut continue to shake bodies and minds with their post-punk doses magnificently combined with funk and ambient atmospheres. And on the other, the revered Ride, a seasoned band whose merits include being one of the fathers of shoegaze, that cocktail of distortion, almost subterranean voices and let's say heterodox harmonies.
But the good thing about such a large festival is being able to choose. Like the vocally soft and carnal r'n'b of Barcelona's Bikôkô, twenty-something Neï Lydia. Her proposal rides on the dominant African percussion and an electric bass rather than accompaniment. The proposal, also led by a woman, from the Australians Amyl and the Sniffers cannot be overlooked. If only because of the volume of the sound and the punk voice and attitude, it was one of the moments of the afternoon. And of course it would be an unfair oversight not to mention the Texan trio Khruangbin, with one of the most unusual and at the same time addictive proposals with a funk groove but with which music and echoes from half the planet run through.
In other things, mention the problematic performance of rapper Jay Eletronica, which brought the public to the stage and ended in a session of twenty minutes including incidents. In any case, an exception within the fluid normality.
