In preparing for my very first Primavera Festival experience, I pack like a Boy Scout going to Berghain. Oversized American bottles of Vitamin B and C tablets rattle around comfortingly inside my suitcase alongside iron supplements, Dramamine, fentanyl test strips, Liquid IV packets, condoms, and extra-strength Tylenol. I lost my virginity in Tenessee at Bonnaroo, I’ve fainted over the unforgiving barrier gate during a Bikini Kill set at Chicago’s Riot Fest, and I’ve cracked my head open while conducting some ill-advised crowd surfing to Tame Impala at Shaky Knees in Atlanta—which is all to say, I know how these things can go sometimes, and find that it’s best to anticipate disaster if only to find yourself pleasantly surprised should things turn out alright.
Even the flight to Barcelona is groovy and hype-building; Philadelphia International has never looked so terminally hip. Teenagers with Robert Smith-esque teased hair cluster cross-legged in neat little quads of longline denim shorts, Onitsuka sneakers, and knockoff Chrome Hearts jewelry sitting heavy on every finger. A slim figure crosses my eyeline, hoisting a vintage robin’s egg blue carrying case under his arm, I have the passing thought— this is like summer camp for assholes, before my brain catches up with my vision; that’s Alex G, and that bag most likely holds some piece of stage gear too precious to be trusted with in the hands of underpaid airport personnel. I take a stealthy photo to shoot to some unimpressed friends, you know, like an asshole. Two plastic cups of overpriced Brawler are consumed quickly and go down like water. I can feel it all coming back to me now.
Before arrival to the festival itself, my attention is somewhat divided. “Journalistic integrity” and thoughts of content creation are peppered with flashes of 90-degree weather, Hugo spritzes, salt water, and my newly minted Hinge account. Primavera Festival is influencer-pretty, toting big names like a tattoo peaking over a low-slung skirt- intriguing, but haphazard to a degree that triggers warning signals to the brain. With a lineup that offers a little something for everybody, cohesion could be easily sacrificed in a sweeping-arm bid to get as many “heads” in the door as possible, which raises the perpetual question: Can anything received in mass quantity actually be valuable? I’m not talking about music here, which should be shared wildly, enthusiastically, with everyone who will listen. I’m talking about experiences.
I am cautious of universal palatability, of rock stages named after big-brand sponsorships, and of the idea of “getting out of your head” as a concept. I am a sensory-fueled masochist, and I want everything to be as difficult as possible in order for it to feel important. I am, however, also not made of fucking stone. Parc Del Fòrum is a beautiful place to see bands, the towering sky above you bleeds into endless ocean, turning the horizon blue in all directions, while a massive concrete shipping dock gives way to wide-open plazas full of happy, healthy-looking people lounging around and dancing on flawless green astroturf. Barcelona in early summer is a city under sedation, blissed-out on uncompromising dry heat that numbs the brain and heightens the senses. Your body isn’t an afterthought; you are constantly reminded of your role as a physical participant, as an audience member. Sweat rolls down my neck while Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale flexes her muscles on supersized LED screens, ushering in the Festival’s start on Wednesday evening. It’s all very No Doubt as you’ve preserved them best in your memory; perspiration, corporal strength, raw power.
The hours pass, with an overseas flight behind me and impossibly-late sunsets shuttering the evening, all concept of time goes out the window. I’m in zen-state (Zyn state), bouncing from interviews to tapas bars to architecture tours, then back to festival grounds again. My editor’s apartment in the city’s Gothic Quarter and the bright-lit pseudo-hospital interior of Primavera’s press coverage tent become dual-end touchstones on any otherwise hazy spectrum of living. Music pumps supersonic, at all times, across seventeen festival stages, then fades into the background, trickling down winding cobblestone streets and tinny souvenir shop speakers. My pulse aligns with the noise; endless pleasure cycles become secondhand nature.
It’s enough of a good thing, so much so that the poor weather on Friday doesn’t really register until it’s too late. I’m standing body-to-body with the masses, prepared to experience Geese-fueled musical euphoria. Those of us who didn’t think to bring any kind of protective coverage are casting jealous glances at those who did, while simultaneously assuring each other that it’ll pass, there’s no way it’ll keep raining.
It’s a bad bet, because it does, of course, keep raining. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice says reality check, but that noise is drowned out beneath a new sense of delighted urgency. The best live performances are a constant repeating system of attack and defeat. I want to feel purged, wrecked, and emptied out by the power of music. There has to be a force to overcome; the ever-present enemy that surrounds. Over-thin oxygen is shot through with brimming electricity while a blackening sky looms above, umbrellas are turned inside-out, multicolor pochos are torn apart, and against the howling wind, Cameron Winter is screaming, “Barcelona under water!!!” during Cowboy Nudes. They love this shit; drummer Max Bassin with his Joel Gion sunglasses, the manic smiles shared between Cameron and guitarist Emily Green every time a black-shirted festival tech frantically pulls the members aside between songs, assumedly telling them they don’t have to continue playing while calculating insurance payouts in their mind, only for them to keep going. Geese want to be rockstars, they are rockstars, and this is a rock and roll moment, in the classical sense. Good friction that can be harnessed and used to prove a point about what it is they do here.
By the end of Geese’s set, I am soaked, freezing, and satisfied. My shirt has been sacrificed in an effort to preserve my hair (rendered obsolete), and I am positive that there isn’t enough vitamin C in the world to combat what I’ve just done, but there is no question in my mind that it was worth it. There are shows that stick out in your memory because of the conversation that happened afterward, or the chorus you got kissed during, or the lyric that rang out, repeated, the exact perfect amount of times, the mantra. It’s better, maybe, when there is the tangible feeling that the set will be just as memorable for the band themselves. This isn’t an individualistic experience; it’s a group effort to execute and consume the best work possible to the highest effect and raise the bar an inch higher every time.
That is the sense that you get from Primavera sets: that the work is being performed to the best ability possible, major motion picture, laser-focused. There isn’t so much room for improvisation as there is amplification, to be the most entertaining, the most sonically photorealistic to the record, and then some. It’s all a bit Disneyland; I get the feeling as if I’m inside some hedonistic court, full of wine and beauty and overindulgence. Gorrilaz are already headlining, but they bring out Mos Def, Little Simz, and De La Soul to sweeten the pot. Olivia Rodrigo plays a surprise set with a guest appearance by Robert Smith (obviously), and Addison Rae throws herself into the crowd with her head thrown back and thousands of people in the palm of her hand, screaming on command; undiluted, self-luxuriant pop perfection, working the summit.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours agonizing over music, spending my nights slow-blinking over hopeless laptop sessions, desperately trying to find the next high buried in some defunct blog somewhere. I’ve flown across the country for shows that were just okay, on the off chance something memorable could’ve happened. Money that I didn’t have has been burned, my body shambles, twenty-five going on fifty, due to years of reckless abuse. None of that effort was wasted, because gratification rings so much more clearly now.
The Cure play, the third time that I’ve seen the band perform, and I lie on my back and listen to Robert giggle into the microphone, engaging with the crowd in a way I’ve never seen him do before. Damon takes a break from his set to remark about the smell of the sea air and how it reminds him of his home. Jamie XX cries while delivering a speech about how thankful they are to be playing again. Everyone here is so goddamn happy it washes over you, undeniable in its simplicity; everything feels crystal-clear and circularly rewarding.
I am always imagining music as the perspective looking upward from the side of a mountain, half visual manifestation, half narrative translation. The best live sets, to me, align with the image, giving the feeling that you’re tipping forward into something dangerous and unknown. My Bloody Valentine’s Saturday night performance was the feeling I’m talking about, compared to the slick, laminated corners and aerial production from the day before; this was provocation, severing whatever soft-tissue that’d surrounded the day to subsonic hums that stretched out in tidal waves, gigantic and omnipotent. The visual correlations came easily; Bob Flanagan’s Wall of Pain, acid party films like Richard Kern’s Submit to Me or Paul Sharits’ T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, apocalyptic sleaze, amateur pornography. The band waded through You Made Me Realize with a minutes-long noise jam added to close the set, with drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig reeling the band in before, again and again, sending them exploding into disarray. I get stuck on my images: wet denim, Michelle Trachtenberg, video cameras, the color blue. I wasn’t stoned, but I was delirious; they’re just that good.
It’s a fair enough reason to go anywhere because music is there, or your friends. You get a sunburn, a ruined shirt, more damage to your liver, and a bone-deep insight into where to go to get a kebab in Spain at four AM. There is not always a summit to climb over, but at Primavera, there was no abstraction, just sensation stacked on top of sensation, narrowing down my constant need for more into the active present, finally so fully overwhelmed with noise that I could be pacified, pinned exactly where I was, with total, blissful immediacy.
If there’s a reason to go to Primavera, it isn’t because the lineup is bigger, or the weather is better, or that the city is more beautiful than anywhere else you could spend your summer (although those things are mostly true and certainly worth noting). It’s because the festival allows itself to be as expansive and extravagant as the artists they book, and as vibrant as the people who attend the shows. The rewards come easily; you just have to be willing to stay out a little late to earn them.
