The first thing you need to know about Primavera is that – to do it properly, at least – you’ll have to change your conception of time. When most UK festivals are gearing up for their big finale, this Barcelona bash is wiping its bleary eyes and thinking about opening up for the day. Some of the biggest bookings – the Strokes, Ride – might roll up around midnight, but there will be plenty more artists on the bill after that, and if you’re not walking home in broad daylight you should consider it a personal failure. “Breakfast is served between 7am and 10am,” my hotel informs me, and it feels like some bizarre anachronism from a pre-Primavera world.
Time isn’t the only thing here that messes with your preconceptions. Who knew, for instance, that Sleaford Mods and their pulsating invective – “No you fuck off, I’ve got a Brit award” – would draw one of the most packed crowds of the event? Some of us might be struggling to order a vino tinto, but evidently being called a prick over skittering lo-fi beats translates in any language. Likewise, Antony and the Johnsons last Thursday night might not seem like the most upbeat festival curtain raiser, but the combination of full orchestra, Steinway grand piano and lyrics about environmental destruction – all performed as the sun set on the Barcelona skyline – made it suitably moving. And, thanks to a lightly pulsing interpretation of his Hercules and Love Affair track Blind, gently euphoric, too.
The euphoria needs to be gentle early on, because Primavera’s secret weapon is to wait until the wee small hours before really cranking that side of things up. Jon Hopkins’s brand of subtle electronica can sometimes struggle for visual impact at a festival, but at 2am on the mid-sized ATP stage – where he’s joined by backing dancers hurling brightly lit hula hoops around – it works perfectly, and an hour-long set gives his songs the space to unravel elegantly. The following night’s Underworld performance is rather more brutal as they serve up a first festival outing for their unrelenting Dubnobasswithmyheadman show on the Saturday night to a backdrop of white strobe lights. Best of all, though, is Caribou, who essentially close the festival with a 3am set on the Ray-Ban stage. Dan Snaith’s band play in a tight circle centre-stage, their close-knit harmony mirrored by that of the audience, who have taken to thrusting bits of discarded greenery in the air and telling strangers that they “can’t do without you”.
The only other artist who manages to unite the crowd this effortlessly is Lionel Messi, whose wonder goal for Barcelona in the Copa del Rey final against Athletic Bilbao is beamed across a giant screen in the food-truck area. The giddy atmosphere for the match shows that, while not exactly Glastonbury, Primavera is about more than just the music. There are good food and drink options – dedicated wine stalls and the chance to sample ceviche from a food truck and not get chronic food poisoning – while the site itself is a weird mix between gravelly car park and Blade Runner set, complete with giant solar panels on the seafront.
Primavera is now 15 years old, during which time it’s expanded to offer at least six big/medium stages and a handful of smaller ones. Just wandering around in a circle provides a great soundtrack, so that over the course of the weekend you might find yourself watching Run the Jewels’s Killer Mike bring out his wife so that the crowd can sing Happy Birthday for her, or Ariel Pink twisting people’s collective melon with songs such as White Freckles. One moment you’re catching the impassioned sound of Sleater-Kinney causing a riot (grrrl) on the Heineken stage, the next hearing Perfume Genius perform a set so hushed that he might be the first artist in history to be drowned out by the sonic force of a nearby Belle and Sebastian set. Elsewhere, energy levels peak with Tyler, the Creator (who throws his limbs across the stage in a manner not normally witnessed outside children’s cartoons), the Julie Ruin’s Kathleen Hanna (who does cartwheels and the splits) and a white-dungaree clad DFA 1979, whose brutal dance-rock hybrid does its best to rudely interrupt the festival’s late night loved-up atmosphere.
Tyler The Creator. Right now at #PS2015 #PrimaveraSound #tylerthecreator http://t.co/22aaQk4k10 pic.twitter.com/fckWZENC9y
— Gerard Estadella (@icanteachyou) May 28, 2015
If the varied slot times suggest an egalitarian spirit removed from the UK way of doing things, there are still acts here that might be considered headliners.
For a famously ramshackle band, the Replacements’ European comeback runs surprisingly smoothly – even the bumpy I Will Dare sounds tightly coiled with energy. The band’s penchant for confounding cover versions, however, remains intact. Could this be the first group in history to perform The Jackson 5’s I Want You Back and (a small bit of) Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart in the same set?
The Strokes are a more confusing proposition, not least when they arrive on stage and there’s a gasp from the crowd at Julian Casablancas’s dyed red and yellow mullet and fluorescent jacket. A sample of nearby comments throws up suggestions that range from “cyber-goth Ed Miliband” to “post-rehab recycling plant manager”, but whatever you plump for, it’s not pretty. Luckily, his voice sounds as thrilling as it ever did and the band embark on a set that has peaks and troughs roughly in correlation with whether they’re playing old songs or newer ones. As makers of relevant new music, you suspect the Strokes are pretty much finished, but they can still electrify with the likes of Hard to Explain and The Modern Age.
Nothing from the Strokes, or indeed any other artist playing at Primavera, comes close to the highlight of the weekend: Patti Smith, who is performing her classic 40-year-old album Horses in full. “C’mon motherfuckers,” she screams at the beginning, and it feels like an order rather than an invite.
The idea of having to read aloud your old poetry is the stuff of anxiety dreams for most people, but Smith’s words still sound relevant, and she updates them to take in the modern political landscape of the Catalan capital, which has just elected a left-wing mayor, Ada Colau.
“We are all Johnny,” Smith spits at one point. “We are all being fucked by corporations, by the military. We are free people and we want the world and we want it NOW!”
Her voice doesn’t sound as good as on record – it sounds better, angrier, more impassioned. She channels this fury into giving the show as many transcendent, poetic moments as the album itself, especially on Birdland and the goosebump-inducing Free Money.
Smith ends with the set’s only non-Horses track: a knowingly controversial run through Rock’n’Roll Nigger that ends in a blizzard of broken guitar strings. There will be some who applaud Smith’s desire to show that artists can say unspeakable things – and point to the fact that the song identifies with, and champions, the oppressed. There will be others who refuse to accept that a 68-year-old white woman can use the term in any context, and it’s an unsettling experience to witness a largely white crowd singing Smith’s words back to her with gleeful abandon. Then again, this is hardly a crowd who turned up for the think pieces, and they possess a seemingly limitless ability to transform even the most incendiary political message into a singalong.
It’s fitting, then, that the whole event finally reaches a messy climax with the ultimate no-brainer party in the form of DJ Coco’s now-legendary indie disco set, during which the Ray-Ban stage is invaded by punters who want to Shake It Off to Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac. It’s during these sunrise hours that one nearby audience member has a revelatory experience and declares: “Dude! Even Patti Smith could have done with a drop!” And with this higher level of musical insight achieved, everyone dances towards the exit and on to the next party … well, apart from this writer, who begrudgingly has to accept that flights back to Gatwick have yet to get on board with Primavera Time.
- This article was amended on 2 June 2015. It originally claimed that this was the first time Patti Smith had played the Horses album live, which is not correct.
