The eclectic Primavera tilted the compass towards guitar tension at the restart of the 20th edition of the festival, this Thursday at the Parc del Fòrum, after the program of these days focused on clubs. Rock with quarrelsome punk accents and a beer aroma with Amyl and the Sniffers, sonic curtains pointing to inner abysses in the pass of riding and the solemn post-punk surgery of Interpol They channeled the day, again among the crowds, as the gateway to a weekend that is expected to be capitalized by attractions such as The Strokes, Lorde, Dua Lipa, Tyler, The Creator or Antònia Font.
The parade of bands returned in an environment in which it could be perceived less anxiety than in the so-called ‘weekend 1’, the urgencies suffocated and the spirits appeased after a week of concerts of all sizes. Public perhaps more willing to enjoy the music with serenity, who attended the Fòrum in a somewhat more staggered way than the first Thursday, and a bar service that worked with the dynamism that one can expect in a macro festival of this caliber. New wink in favor of the Barcelona-Madrid friendship: the mural with the kiss of Ada Colau and Isabel Ayuso was replaced by that of Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho in the same act of love.
Sloppy ‘frontwoman’
The tension focused on the stage, in passes like Amyl and the Sniffers. The Australian gang compensated us for the suspension last December, due to the covid infection of her singer, Amy Taylor, and her bassist, Gus Romer. They looked fresh and cocky at the Fòrum riding, above all, on the orgy of garage ‘riffs’ and furious rhymes from their second album, ‘Comfort to me’. Steamy pub stuff like ‘Freaks to the front’ and ‘Hertz’, where the romantic Taylor screamed (literally) to be taken for a walk on the beach, all the while squirming and flexing as a distant niece of Wendy O. Williams.
Another type of electric language, tending towards floating spaces and double-bottomed curtains, made its way with Ride, who proceeded to tour his second album, ‘Going blank again’ (1992) on Wednesday, on its 30th anniversary, this Once focused on the first, ‘Nowhere’ (1990), whose birthday was torpedoed by the pandemic. Seminal ‘shoegazing’ album, that school of musicians who played looking at each other’s shoes, five minutes before Brit-pop, didn’t bring crystalline pop songs in the style of ‘Twisterella’, but dense swells: from ‘Seagull’ to the tempestuous ‘Dreams burn down’ and the atmospheric but martial ‘Paralyzed’.
Sorting out the ‘revival’
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In terms of severe rhythms, an award for Interpol, a band capable of acting as a festival attraction despite his obscurantist gene heir to Joy Division, The Chameleons, the first Echo & The Bunnymen, etc. But these New Yorkers transcended the ‘revival’ moving from the distant ‘Untitled’ to a couple of appreciable new songs (‘Fables’ and ‘Toni’), a preview of their new album, ‘The other side of make-believe’, which will be released the 15th of July.
Paul Banks and company knew how to build a concert of increasing palpitation, through the sleepwalking cadence of ‘Pioneer to the falls’ and going to the appointments of his first album, such as ‘Obstacle 1’ and ‘PDA’. Theirs was a post-punk antidote to the rather hippie previous session by Khruangbin, a Texan combo subscribed to psychedelic rock with long, ambient compositions played by mystical soul and with desert blues aromas, suitable for decorating a languid festival sunset.