The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

What with the ever-growing barrage of boutique festivals reaching tipping point these days, they are no longer the novelty they once were for the comfortable classes. So, overseas festivals are the way to go. That will make me sound interesting come Monday morning at Price Waterhouse Cooper.

Granted, Primavera’s setting is pretty idyllic on Barcelona’s harbour, the Mediterranean sun and bronzed Catalan bodies adding a certain ardour to each day’s music, even if the dull sulphuric stench of the city’s drains did not. Across five main stages was a line-up dominated by indie-punk, electro-indie and generally all things loud and important. And Rufus Wainwright.

Day one offered the two seeds from which sprang distinctly different strands of hip hop. The enduring energy of Public Enemy and De La Soul is not to be doubted, and cheering it was to hear them reference each other throughout their sets. The former’s recent habit of performing It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back in its entirety is most welcome, and tonight it is blistering indeed, but Chuck D and Flava Flav would be well-warned to not do it too often, thus cheapening what remains political rap’s finest moment. De La Soul’s permanent childhood continues, meanwhile, and are buoyant here even if down to the very last ‘aww yeah’ their show seems over-rehearsed at times. Elsewhere on Thursday The Notwist continued to sound a lot like Wilco, and were indeed perhaps the finest non-hip hop act on day one, closely followed by the immaculate Caribou, whose show is arguably becoming too perfect. Hampered by sub-standard sound on the CD Drome stage, Dan Snaith acted as a flawless aperitif for a chirpy Vampire Weekend across the other side of the cemented festival site.

The second day was all about the ATP Stage, which seemed to be emitting one long screech of feedback all night. There is little between Six Organs of Admittance and Autolux in their abrasive and aggressive (yet soulful) noise-rock, and both possess an understated charm in both music and persona that Times New Viking lacked the next day. Even with The Sonics and Devo headlining (Mark Mothersbaugh at one point fell arse about elbow attempting some elaborate dancing), the Friday was largely disappointing, with the exception of The Felice Brothers, whose libido-fuelled country-rock was a thirst-quenching dose of roots amid all the moogs and distortion.

If Bon Iver’s album, For Emma, Forever Ago is open to accusations of being a bit too boring at times, live they are something quite breathtaking. Justin Vernon and his falsetto sparked a stream of entertaining sets all over the festival site on the final day. One of these were Port O’Brien, who are becoming more and more like a cross between America and Crazy Horse with every show. That is a compliment, by the way. The Californians plugged the same gap as The Felice Brothers the day before, if with a little more electric guitar and lot more subtlety. From this point it was left to a solo Rufus Wainwright, uncharacteristically attired in sweats and jeans, to perform a fairly predictable set, and Animal Collective to inject the small hours with a perverted electronica that was, by the end, too appropriate for words.

Of course, Primavera’s audience had to find their own accommodation. So hotels and more so given the (probable) large student contingent here, hostels were full to bursting. These are often not pleasant places. George Orwell in Down and Out in Paris and London wrote “the important thing is that a man should be alone when he sleeps” and indeed when you wake to find the underpants of a large, moustachioed gentleman have fallen on you from the top bunk overnight, you can see his point. Orwell might well have approved of Animal Collective to ease his painful sleeplessness, as I did.

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