Of the silky neo-soul nightlife by NxWorries Ghost’s hard rock apocalypse mediates something like an abyss, but that is, apparently, the dictate of the times, that the Primavera Sound has proceeded to interpret without mania. He is backed by a very large public that this Thursday occupied all the enabled spaces, which are a few less than before, since the Nice Forum bridge and Sant Adrià beach.
On the first day of the festival, with the entire venue enabled (after its partial opening on Wednesday with Pet Shop Boys), as many people as ever were seen from midafternoon, rampant crowds that responded to proposals that were initially minority groups such as rock of Black Country Art and Essay, New Road. An art-rock of extremes, capable of the most sensitive filigree and torrential instrumental whirlwinds, which speaks to us of mental instability, now in the voice of bassist Tyler Hyde (who assumes the tasks of the tortured and escaped Isaac Wood). The group settled on the material of their new stage, from the album ‘Live at Bush Hall’, with temperamental tidal waves, with violin and sax, on songs like ‘Turbines’ and ‘Dancers‘.
With Caroline Polachek
There, in the great esplanade known cordially as Mordor, Alex G wore his meritorious pop songbook, sensitive and with a rough touch, with numbers like ‘Mission’, to which the voice of Caroline Polachek was added. And, in contrast, the boys from Turnstile showed that under the sign of hardcore it is still possible to turn an enclosure upside down with urgency and invitation to a ‘pogo’ of those of before. Overwhelming pass on the back of a ‘setlist’ that did not let up, from ‘Mystery’ to ‘Blackout’.
HE were seen loitering around the place wearing ‘heavy‘: ironic posturing or sincere love? Motörhead already performed once at Primavera (as well as quite a few extreme metal bands), but Ghost was something new. A very classic soundtrack, actually more hard rock than metal, with keyboard arrangements worthy of Abba and choruses a la Europe, and that little by little little seems to be placing itself in the stadium rock league. In the Fòrum they were affected by daylight, which did not allow the display of its Gothic stained glass windows, but the ‘show’ was overwhelminga somewhat condensed version of the one offered last year at the Palau Olímpic in Badalona.
Phil Collins on the retina
There there were showy numbers like ‘Kaisarion‘, ‘Rats’ or ‘Watcher in the sky’, an extended agenda with one of the ‘covers’ from the recent epé ‘Phantomime’. The Iron Maiden one, perhaps? The Stranglers? Well, the chosen one turned out to be ‘Jesus he knows me’, a semi-forgotten ‘hit’ by Genesis with Phil Collins, who invited us to ponder why we can hate a song and, immediately afterwards, appreciate it if they sell it to us in another way. From there to the sacred words of ‘Year Zero‘: “Belial, Behemoth, Beelzebub / Asmodeus, Satanas, Lucifer& rdquor;, with Tobias Forge, or Papa Emeritus IV, warning us of the imminence of the Antichrist, on the way to the final salvoes with ‘Dance macabre’ and ‘Square hammer’.
Brittney Denise Parks, that is, Sudan Archiveswas not born when, in 1991, Phil Collins dominated the radio formula, and his idea of a pop artefact is somewhat different: it arises from the digestion of r’n’b plots with witty tunes, vestiges of trip-hop and that disconcerting violin with which he marks melodic borders worthy of the ‘jigs and reels’ of Celtic music. It was planted in the Fòrum, in the shadow of the photovoltaic panel, together with a single companion, in charge of the bases, and although a slightly more leafy staging would have done well, left a nice and promising trail featuring material from their acclaimed second album, ‘Natural brown prom queen’.
Oasis vs. Blur
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And although the stars of the day, already at night and early morning, they were both very English pop groups Pointing to the ’80s (New Order) and ’90s (Blur), there was a helping of modern African-American ‘star system’ with the rise of NxWorries. We are talking about the team that in 2015 created the singer-rapper Anderson .Paak (Bruno Mars’s colleague in the popular Silk Sonic duo) and producer Knxwledge.
It was a sweet, sensual and ultimately invasive way of introducing us into the night, his, combining sometimes almost whispered singing with collected sounds with a ‘retro’ aftertaste, from seventies soul vinyl. Initially minimalist staging, reduced to their two presences, wrapped up in video and gaining height little by little at the expense of their ‘singles’ of recent times (‘Where I go’, ‘Daydreaming”) and an audacity, or prank: the graft of ‘Wonderwall’, by Oasis, in a night aimed at hosting Blur, its great historical rival. Finally addressing the piece most associated with his first stage‘Suede’, the NxWorries thing ended up having the form of a party, with a dancing troupe in scene and a narcotic halo enveloping the night of the Fòrum.