Home to the Big Three! No, not that “big three” that started that beef of last year, Primavera is home to the big three of current pop. Curating your lineup with Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter is almost as brazen as opening a festival preview on a website with Metal in the title with a bit about the big three pop acts. They’re a big draw though and putting all three on the same bill is genuinely ridiculous. Don’t let the headliners fool you though, this lineup is stacked and as broad genre’d as they come!
Slightly heavier? The Jesus Lizard will be a huge contrast to the top of the bill, their intimidating guitar parts and their pained and unique vocal style. Idles feature high on June 5th lineup; their Other Stage headline set at last years Glastonbury was a stand out set of the weekend so putting them late at night in Barcelona will hopefully bring a repeat of that energy. Turnstile will likely bring the same energy to the festival on the Saturday evening, which will coincide with the release of their fourth album, Never Enough, out on Roadrunner the day before.
Electronic music is well catered for too, whether that’s with an incredibly late night LCD Soundsystem set on the Saturday night or a Floating Points live set on Friday. The festival even opens on the Wednesday night with Caribou performing a live set! One of the interesting choices is Danny L Harle doing both a live set on the Friday and a DJ set on the Saturday, his music is somehow both fun and interesting and I have no idea how it would work as a live performance but I look forward to finding out!
Overwhelmingly though this is a great festival for indie! Spiritualized will be performing their second album, Pure Phase in full on the Thursday night, Cat Power will be performing a cover of the whole of Bob Dylan’s legendary 1966 Free Trade Hall performance. Haim are high up the bill on the Friday – their new album I Quit comes out in June so hopefully this will be a good opportunity to hear a bunch of new material live! Speaking of new material, Wet Leg perform not long before the release of their second LP Moisturizer, which comes out in July. Given how many earworms the first record delivered I look forward to hearing new music! Personally I’m excited to see one of my all time favourites, Los Campesinos! as well as indie legends Cap’n Jazz.
Primavera runs from June 4th to the 8th at Parc Del Fòrum, Barcelona. Tickets are currently sold out however there is a wait list for availability through AccessTicket, available on their website.