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So you come out of the ground at the Metro on the edge of Barcelona and see this massive indigo sponge across the road, and behind that, the Mediterranean

Sea. The sponge is the Forum Building, and as you get closer you see shafts of sky cutting through its side, where it’s mirrored. You walk up the slope and walk under and through the building where the sloping ground surface is all white and shimmering and magical and you’re under the sea and get ushered into a dark cave and who is at the back of it only Final Fantasy, making music that’s both ancient and modern at the same time. He’s playing classical violin and singing. The violin parts he records live and loops them and replays and layers his melody lines giving a huge sound with just one man on stage. It’s one of many gigs that begins with a nearly empty audience and ends with a full house.Leaving the auditorium, the only indoor stage of the Primavera festival, you walk along more slopes, this time it’s like sand dunes that have been paved over, and there’s a wall you can try and run up, if you’re feeling physical.We rambled on to Motorhead at Rockdelux. Their stage was stacked up with extra speakers blasting out the hits at a crushingly loud volume. Lemmy goes - “The Babyshambles are up next, I think we must be the Grown-up Shambles…” Babyshambles played a few good tunes, it was fine, they were keeping the thing going, but we were just getting impatient to see Yo La Tengo who were on after them. They came on and played tune after tune, one more beautiful than the next, smiling and swaying and loving it. That was the perfect late night set, just let the music seep in and keep standing. Easy. P:ano are a Vancouver band who sound kind of like Belle and Sebastian. They’re really happy on stage. Many of their songs came from their new album Of Fake Love Songs. They’ve got an accordion, an oboe, drums, and a ukulele, and at the end they played an old fashioned four-part song, with the only accompaniment being clackers and spoons and shakers. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were as completely different as you could get from P:ano, Karen O strutting and shimmying like there’s no tomorrow in the shortest dress ever, being all electric guitar loud and screaming and giving off what I think the young people refer to as “raw rock energy.”So next we find ourselves wiggling our booties to ESG, everyone with their hands in the air, getting all worked up and being all daft and funny. That was the energy boost needed before the Flaming Lips invaded the main stage with a gang of dancing Santas and aliens. It was kinda manic – balloons,

streamers, confetti, smoke machines, flashlights, spinning light - giving the audience the best five-year-old’s birthday party they never had. Unfortunately, the slump came hard when it came, in the form of Animal Collective. They played “Turn Into Something” early on, which was great, but then they were determined to make the audience work. They doodled and dweedled for ages and ages and then finally a version of “The Purple Bottle” mashed with Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” It was madly visceral and amazing but didn’t cancel out the headache and grumpiness from the doodling. Akron/Family on the final day were what many wished Animal Collective had been. They’ve got all that noise stuff as well, but they don’t over do it, and they don’t take themselves seriously at all. They had a few minutes to spare before they could start so they did some exercises on stage with the audience to loosen up. They have the most beautiful, quiet songs, which everyone loved. Then they start putting hair on your chest with a crazy loud gnarl of sound, and then it’s more singing away and shouting just for the fun of it. They played early, and they got a huge audience out of nowhere pretty quickly.I only caught the end of Deerhoof because someone convinced me that I had to see Lou Reed (“but what if he dies?”) and it was really hyper – the Japanese vocalist is the cutest girl ever, singing in a beepy cartoon voice with guitar and drum noise to an ecstatic audience. Three days were over already but the edge was taken off the sorrow with one last night out, a free after party at a cool club in the centre of the city. The coolest band in the world Xiu Xiu played and they were really dirty and heavy and dancey, and all the Europeans dug it.

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words / photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Melissa Doran

(clockwise top right) Flaming Lips, Xiu Xiu, P:ano, Akron/Familywww.primaverasound.com

LIVE REVIEW

PRIMAVERA SOUND 2006Barcelona