From the planeloads of Scots who make the early-June festival an annual pilgrimage, to the array of Scottish bands, DJs and producers who do pretty much the same, Barcelona's Primavera Sound frequently feels as deeply connected with Scotland as it is with our spiritual brethren in Catalonia. The National has always found it difficult to resist the lure of a few days of top-flight musical action in the Catalan capital, and this June found scant improvement in our resolve. Here are six things we learned along the way.
Front 242 can still do it after all these years
Primavera Sound has a good habit of selecting "heritage" acts who can still put on a fantastic show, and this year Skinny Puppy, Swans, Slayer and Shellac all did the business, along with a few bands that don't begin with the letter "S". Primary among that contingent were Front 242, the Belgian EBM (electronic body music) band responsible for several Optimo classics and a thrillingly aggressive, visceral oeuvre as a whole. Now pushing 60, frontman Jean-Luc De Meyer could have been forgiven for having retreated into more obviously age-appropriate fashions by now, but we were reminded in seconds that, when it comes to skin-tight Berghain-ready leather, it's all about how you wear it. De Meyer was possibly the most commanding stage presence we found all weekend (OK, Grace Jones aside), and his band's set, full of classics such as "Headhunter" and "Masterhit", was equally potent. Less a pleasant surprise than a gloriously noisy and powerful one.
Primavera's dance music area is almost a festival in itself by now
Until a few short years ago, Primavera Sound's dance music element was confined to sets on the festival's regular stages during the final three hours or so of each night. Then came small dedicated stages serviced by the likes of Boiler Room and Bowers & Wilkins. Fast forward to 2017 and this has grown into what to the untrained eye could pass for an entire separate festival – two big stages (one for live acts and one for DJs) across the harbour from PS's main area, given the slightly strange name of Primavera Bits. Although queues to get onto the bridge linking the main part of Parc del Forum to Primavera Bits were occasionally a problem, once there the area felt like a natural addition to the festival.
Highlights in the DJ area (serviced by the rightly renowned Bowers & Wilkins' Sound System) included particularly party-ready sets from chain-smoking Dutch producer Young Marco and Studio Barnhus co-founder Kornél Kovacs, and exquisitely tight, textured, pounding techno from Serbia's Vladimir Ivkovic and the Berlin-based American Avalon Emerson. On the live stage, meanwhile, Tuff City Kids, Bicep and our own Lord of the Isles excelled, though the stage suffered from periodic technical problems that will presumably be ironed out for next year.
Primavera Bits has become a nice place to hang out too, with a couple of nice bar areas and an astounding sunset behind the upper live stage as Autarkic played on Saturday night two of the other treats of the weekend. Last year the area was open but had only one stage, which felt like rather scant reward for the trek across the bridge to get there. With the addition of a second stage and a lot more space, the whole thing suddenly makes a lot of sense. The only problem now is mustering the desire to go back across the bridge to the main area.
John Talabot remains this festival's biggest trump card
Hivern Discs founder, Barcelona native and all-round good guy John Talabot is often seen as the exception that proves the rule in a weirdly sluggish scene of native DJs and producers in Barcelona. Whether that's fair or not, the city continues to benefit hugely from his apparently bottomless well of inspiration, and he is unsurprisingly heavily involved in the festival year in, year out. Primary among his activities here in the last few years has been his annual Disco Set, two hours of pure joy from one of the world's finest disco selectors. This year he also turned in a riotously fun two hours with Stockholm's Axel Boman in their Talaboman guise at the bowl-like Ray-Ban Stage on Friday night, and, once again, his vibrating, gently heated chair at Primavera Sound's top table was effortlessly re-confirmed.
Marie Davidson is equally great on a festival stage as in the small clubs we're used to seeing her in
The Montreal artist, who compiled an excellent Five of the Best feature for us recently, has a sound – spoken-word poetry performed over deliciously humming, percussive cold-wave music, essentially – that would seem to lend itself most naturally to small rooms. It certainly does do that, but her show on Friday night also proved she is more than capable of commanding a large open-air stage. That's hardly surprising given her immensely likeable, charismatic stage presence (often at her shows it somehow feels like Davidson is talking directly to you), but it was a delight to have it confirmed. There was a healthy list of standout performances at Primavera Sound 2017, but for us Davidson's was the pick of the whole lot.
Grace Jones may well be in the process of acheiving physical immortality
We're generally partial to acts that appear on the smaller stages at Primavera, but that rule made journeying (20 minutes' walk at least from Primavera Bits) to see Grace Jones on the gigantic Heineken Stage feel like an even less negotiable option. And the least surprising fact of the weekend was that the trek was entirely worth it, the one-of-a-kind, 69-year-old superstar stalking the stage clad in body paint and making repeated between-song jokes about "needing some more coke to perform" before taking a big sip from a wine glass full of the same. Her well of classics was duly mined, but her amazing stage show as a whole was what really stuck with us. If you haven't seen Jones play before you really should get around to it soon, though from her unbelievable physical condition it looks quite likely that she will bury us all.
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