Most of the time the phrase ‘festival season’, as it’s recently come to be known, resides in that part of my brain reserved for tasteless perverts and animal baiters. I don’t like ‘festival season’ – it attracts idiots in the same way jam attracts wasps, and the whole thing seems to be presided over by grimacing T4 telly hosts prone to incompetent sarcasm. ‘Festival season’ for me means Vernon Kaye shouting into my living room as I lay stuck and hungover to the sofa, his muscles, despite just being clots of inert and thus essentially blameless matter, themselves exuding an air of unbearable smugness.
The one redeeming feature of ‘festival season’ these past few years has been the fact that Primavera Sound more-or-less heralds its entrance. Held at Barcelona’s Parc del Forum at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, Primavera is the sort of place where things just seem to come together – great music crashes into endless gut-giddying moments, each collision trapping those within it in a magical, timeless zone full of sun, surprise and possibility. As such, it made sense to siphon off some of this excitement into a quick preview feature telling you where to be and when for some of Primavera Sound 2010’s brightest blasts.
The Fall, Thursday 7.10pm, San Miguel Stage
I doubt many of you will have heard of The Fall, but you’ll have to trust me on this one – there’ll be no better way to brace for three days spent amid blissed-out Spaniards than to listen to a middle-aged Mancunian man turning his petty complaints into ceremonies. Who invited the man with the pickled onion for a head into paradise? Doesn’t matter, he’s here, and the suspicion is he fucking detests all of you.
Delorean, Thursday 2.45am, Pitchfork Stage
Whatever it is, ‘indie-rock’ hasn’t been very sunny for the last twenty years. Turns out The Bees and Dodgy had it sussed, though – sun-mad glo-fi has eaten indie’s face and shat out a vast, golden pyramid containing Washed Out’s apricots and the death-dreams of tragic Mayan widows. Delorean are a pretty good example of how Barcelona – or at least the idea of climes like Barcelona, as processed into sound by lonely Americans – is lording it over rainy guitar cities like London and New York at the minute. Makes a lot of sense, then, to head over and sample some of the finest local cuisine (but not the ancient Mayan shit).
Joker featuring Nomad, Friday 2.45am, Pitchfork Stage
The only chance you’ll get to hear anything with sub-bass this weekend. Actually Diplo’s playing, but he’s friends with Rusko, so… yeah, head here. Bristol’s ‘Purple Sound’ weaving its way out towards a Mediterranean horizon is something only an idiot would actively avoid.
The Field, Saturday 3am, Pitchfork Stage
The Field is transcendental enough when you’re just listening to it alone in your bedroom, or in the kitchen as you make up a ham and cheese sandwich. Imagine what ‘Everday’ and ‘The More That I Do’ will do to your head when you’re peering up at this on the best antidotes Catalonia has to offer.
The Field clashes with Orbital and HEALTH, but neither of their respective euphorias are as pure as Alex Willner’s. Purity is something you’re going to need at 3am on Primavera’s final night.
Real Estate, Sunday 6.30pm, Parc Joan Miro
Except it’s not Primavera’s final night – for the hardy, Black Lips will be playing a closing party at Apolo Club Sunday evening, but a more pleasant, if more placid, experience will be had drinking beer and watching Real Estate sing about suburban New Jersey in a park named after a local ceramicist late Sunday afternoon.
