A stone’s throw from the Mediterranean Sea, Primavera Sound Barcelona feels like its own waterfront citadel, existing only for indulging in live music from around the globe. This year’s edition featured pop giants like Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, and Sabrina Carpenter, but also indie vets like Waxahatchee, Beach House and LCD Soundsystem. Nocturnal revelers could catch the Dare or Brutalismus 3000, or DJ sets by Danny L Harle, Frost Children, or DJ Koze. There really was something for everyone—if only it was possible to see it all.
Thursday, June 5
While the Mediterranean sun kissed the Primavera crowd, an intimate bunch gathered indoors in the pitch black confines of the 501 Club, transfixed by Barcelona experimental duo Dame Area. Producer Viktor Lux Crux and vocalist Silvia Konstance made the modest venue feel more like a guerilla punk show in a Berlin basement than a new festival stage. Awash in red light, Dame Area mostly played songs from their latest album, Toda la Verdad Sobre Dame Area, a bracing fusion of synth-punk, industrial, and the kind of dizzying polyrhythms you’d hear in Chicago footwork. When she wasn’t wailing on her drum pad in sync with Lux Crux, Konstance shouted and yelped into the mic, jerking her body back and forth to the beat. Dame Area’s savagely produced electronics make you feel like you’re inside of a machine that’s gone haywire, but Lux Crux and Konstance aren’t detached button-mashers; Konstance couldn’t keep from pogoing into the pit and communing with the crowd.
After missing Coachella due to visa issues, FKA twigs triumphed at Primavera’s Estrella Damm stage on Thursday night, presiding over thousands of adoring fans. Her set was split into three acts, pulling heavily from her new album, Eusexua, while still fitting in tracks from Caprisongs and her heartbreak opera Magdalene. Aside from her agile voice and immaculate production, what really unites an FKA twigs performance are glorious expressions of the body. FKA twigs’ backup dancers—in glossy black tracksuits one moment and nearly nude the next—were so integral to the show that calling them “backup” feels insufficient. Their movements were muscular and staccato like military drills; they hung from metal scaffolding and gyrated, lifted twigs overhead like a ballerina, and swarmed her in fleshy flash mobs. At one point, twigs mounted a dancer like a pony, pretending to slap his ass as he crawled along the stage. And that’s what’s really at the core of an FKA twigs concert: the woman knows how to up the drama. She descended from a floating platform to open with “Perfect Stranger”; she swung around a stripper pole for “24hr Dog”; she brandished a katana sword during “Numbers,” a feat which culminated in the faux-stabbing of a dancer, kicking off his stomach to “dislodge” the blade. But perhaps the most staggering moment arrived in the final act, as twigs stood alone in a blood-red gown singing “Cellophane,” one of the most devastating breakup ballads of the past decade. twigs choked up just before each sweeping chorus, the muscles in her face fighting something back. When the cameras cut to the crowd, her fans were weeping for her.
As if anyone was unaware that Charli XCX was playing Primavera—for the second year in a row, I might add—there was plenty of sponsored and spontaneous content to warn you. Brat green ruled the festival grounds: short shorts, mesh shirts, official Charli merch, bootleg tees that read “Bratelona” or even “Turnstile” in that now ubiquitous color and font. And who could miss the Magnum ice cream bars (eh ehm, the “Bratnum” bar), with their slime green coating and edible logo? So yes, Charli’s presence was being beckoned from the opening bell of the fest, and when she took the stage after 1 a.m., the crowd was positively foaming at the mouth. But then… this is the Sweat Tour, Charli’s joint venture with Troye Sivan, who felt like a salt-free palate cleanser in between the juicy main courses, playing hits like My My My!,” “Bloom,” and “Rush.”
Every time Charli took the stage, she delivered a Grade-A blood transfusion, her charisma as a performer paralleled only by the sheer thrill of her songs, which included “Sympathy Is a Knife, “Guess,” and “Girl, So Confusing.” When she pranced around in a bra and panty set, belting “Von Dutch” and weaving through the crowd, it seemed at once like the candid performance of a teen singing into her hairbrush and the strut of a reigning diva. There were costume changes, of course, but none as memorable as the black baby tee with “PUTA” scrawled across the front, or plaid mini-skirt with panels streaming to the stage floor. As for accessories, nothing bested the brimming glass of white wine, which Charli proffered like your sloppiest aunt giving a wedding toast. “I’m drunk as fuck!” Charli belted at one point. That’s so brat.
Shuffling out with the dense crowd after Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, I was aiming for the exit when a gnarly beat pulled me in a different direction. It was Berlin-based electronic duo Brutalismus 3000, blasting through the speakers at the Amazon Music stage. Comprising producer Theo Zeitner and vocalist Victoria Vassiliki Daldas, Brutalismus 3000 play a roiling blend of hardstyle, gabber, and techno, dispatched with a punk sneer. Daldas, who sings in English, German, and Slovak, deploys a ragged sprechgesang that recalls both riot grrrl and the Prodigy. Dancing and moshing seemed equally appropriate as Zeitner fist pumped behind the decks and Daldas bounded around the stage in a white tracksuit, her black hair whipping around her face. As it neared 4 a.m., the crowd was slightly sloppy but dancing with full force. Brutalismus 3000 emit an aggressive lure, one from which I kept trying to slip away—I had been, by then, at the festival for 12 hours, after all—but each time I tried to leave, my body gave into the beat, and I wound up back among the sweaty hoards.
Friday, June 6
Amid all of the flashy production at a giant festival like Primavera, there’s something so refreshing about an indie group simply playing at its peak. Waxahatchee performed on the Cupra stage on Friday evening, with the Mediterranean Sea as their backdrop and diving seagulls as their dancers. Katie Crutchfield and her band breezed through songs from Tigers Blood, Saint Cloud, and Plains’ I Walked With You Always. MJ Lenderman, who played the same stage later that night, joined Waxahatchee for live renditions of “Right Back to It” and “Burns Out at Midnight.” Ahead of “Oxbow,” Crutchfield looked out into the crowd and said, “This song’s about Barcelona.” It was a poignant, full-circle moment: Crutchfield wrote the song in 2018, the last time Waxahatchee played Primavera. It was during that trip she decided to get sober. That clarity led to Saint Cloud. As she sang “I want it all” on repeat in the chorus, it felt like a wish fulfilled.
The Haim sisters are NEVER DATING AGAIN. Or, at least, that’s what their new album rollout suggests. Before hitting the Revolut stage, on Friday night, fragmented beats blared from the speakers, while a robotic female voice issued solemn vows: “I quit relationships.” “I quit my job.” “I quit dick.” All of this was accompanied by a red LED sign scrolling overhead, a setpiece that later served like an impish HAL 9000 for the sibling trio. After shredding through early tracks like “The Wire” and “My Song 5,” they dipped into newer material: Songs like “Relationships” were met with charged empathy from the ladies in the crowd, who gasped as the LED sign unfurled tales of cheating, money-grubbing men. “Fuck relationships! But just so you know, I’m still fucking single,” Danielle Haim shouted from center stage. Este chimed in with a supportive, if slightly off-brand addendum: “I love my fiance but fuck relationships!” Maybe the Haims aren’t really quitters—after all, their latest single is called “Take Me Back.”
Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally might as well have been swept to the stage on an ocean gale; their set had a mythical quality, as the Beach House musicians played in a thick haze of fog and fuchsia light. The audience fell immediately into a trance, swaying and singing along to “Silver Soul,” “Drunk in LA,” and “Myth.” Legrand was obscured in a haze the entire set, but her voice cut through and put a spell on the entire crowd.
The pint-sized popstar had one of the lushest sets in all of Primavera (…except for Chappell Roan, but more on that later). Sabrina Carpenter’s performance was an homage to early Hollywood razzle-dazzle: Rogers-Astaire style dancers, sparkly ’fits, Carpenter occasionally perching on a white satin bed trimmed with fringe. Songs had their own kitschy infomercials; “Dial 1-800 Bed Chem,” one instructed. Another presented a “Manchild” repellant spray. And, of course, there was a sensual shot of café caliente ahead of “Espresso.” Sadly, there were a handful of sound issues throughout Carpenter’s set—but you wouldn’t know it from her performance. She hit all the notes, nailed every step in her choreo, and never stopped smiling. That’s what you get from a former Disney pro.
Saturday, June 7
In the past six years, Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. have gone from Dublin upstarts to festival darlings, with their moody take on post-punk and ’90s alternative. Like the Britpop acts of 30 years ago, they they too have a bad-boy heartthrob at center stage; vocalist Grian Chatten, draped in a lime green jersey and baggy black trousers, has the melodic sense of a more austere Liam Gallagher, a less cheeky Damon Albarn. Fontaines D.C. opened with “Jackie Down the Line,” from 2022’s Skinty Fia, and continued with tracks from their most recent LP, Romance: “In the Modern World,” “Starburster,” and the title track. But the most memorable song was Skinty Fia ballad “I Love You,” which Chatten dedicated to Palestine. The text “Free Palestine” and “Israel is committing genocide. Use your voice” appeared on the jumbotron behind them in neon green, while Palestinian and Irish flags billowed above the audience. It was not only a plea for the safety of Gazans, but also an act of solidarity with Kneecap.
Chappell Roan fans were already infiltrating the audience long before the pop luminary began her 90-minute set on Saturday. You could plainly see them: the clusters of pink cowboy hats and assless chaps, the bubblegum balloons bobbing in the air, a pink flamingo pool floatie perched on someone’s shoulders. (I don’t think the “I like Chappell Roan and sucking cock” T-shirts were official merch, though.…) Roan made quite the entrance, on a stage projected with mythical imagery, a castle-like structure, and the occasional pyrotechnics. I’m not going to lie: it was kind of giving Wicked, but, in Roan’s rich visual lexicon, it all made sense. The superstar was decked out in a butterfly headdress and blue slit cape, which she eventually shed to reveal a bedazzled leotard. Every song Roan played—“Pink Pony Club,” “Good Luck, Babe!,” “The Giver,” the unreleased fan-fave “Subway,” to name a few—felt like the pop hit of the decade, a testament to Roan’s supreme songwriting talent and her dexterity as a live performer. Also: her band fucking shreds. Throughout all of Primavera, no artist had such a command over the crowd. Roan didn’t even have to give a cue to initiate a call-and-response on “Femininomenon” and “Hot to Go!” And who was doing the “H-O-T-T-O-G-O” dance from her VIP perch? Ms. Sabrina Carptener—along with every single person on the festival grounds.
The pink posse of Chappell Roan fans had mostly cleared out by the time LCD Soundsystem emerged at 1:30 in the morning, but the middle-aged men were happy to fill in. A sea of salt-and-pepper hair undulated to classics by the New York legends, who sounded sharp as ever. That nasty synth riff in “Dance Yrself Clean,” the Suicide-esque “Oh Baby,” the brusk “X-Ray Eyes.” But it wasn’t just Gen Xers and geriatric millennials dancing along: indie darlings MJ Lenderman and Water From Your Eyes’ Rachel Brown were up against the VIP barricade, swaying to classics “I Can Change” and “All My Friends.” Talk about timeless appeal.
It appears that Turnstile’s rabid fanbase extends all the way to Barcelona. The 3 a.m. set time was no deterrent for a packed crowd at the Amazon stage, who churned and moshed and crowd surfed and perched on shoulders to sing along. The Baltimore band banged out tracks from their new album, Never Enough, as well as their beloved 2021 breakout LP, Glow On. Lead singer Brendan Yates sprinted around the stage, leaping in the air and holding his arms in a “V” high above his head, as if delivering a sermon to his devout followers. But, much to the chagrin of many concertgoers, he seems to have kicked an old habit: He kept his shirt on the entire time.