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
Dame Area Delivered Underground Punk Intimacy
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.
FKA twigs: A Striking Display of Strength and Vulnerability
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.
Charli XCX Is Bratelona’s Reigning Diva
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.
Brutalismus 3000: The Hardstyle Maestros Who Will Make You Move
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
A Full-Circle Moment for Waxahatchee
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.