June among stars

211 artists, 35 coun­tries

Pri­mav­era Sound has met the chal­lenge it set it­self for its 20th an­niver­sary: to pro­duce a pro­gramme con­sis­tent with the dif­fer­ent stages the fes­ti­val has passed through, from the indie af­fil­i­a­tion of its be­gin­nings to its en­deav­our to open up to reg­gae­ton in the 2019 edi­tion, while also mak­ing space for, among other music types, ex­treme metal, African music, Ger­man ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and Cata­lan singer-song­writer pop. With the ex­cep­tions of Beck (giv­ing his first con­cert in Barcelona in 22 years!) and coun­try singer Kacey Mus­graves (one of those artists it seemed would never per­form in Cat­alo­nia), this year’s Pri­mav­era Sound is head­lined by ei­ther fa­mil­iar old faces or names that have been cir­cu­lat­ing over the In­ter­net (such as, among oth­ers, The Na­tional, The Strokes, Lana del Rey, Iggy Pop, and Tyler, The Cre­ator). Boast­ing 211 artists of 35 na­tion­al­i­ties, Pri­mav­era Sound 2020 has one of the most at­trac­tive line-ups in its his­tory, with jew­els from a wide range of styles and a ca­pac­ity for sur­prise that re­calls its best edi­tions. The list is end­less, as al­ways, al­though the fol­low­ing are de­serv­ing of spe­cial men­tion: Bri­tanny Howard (leader of Al­abama Shakes and au­thor of one of last year’s best al­bums), the iconic Mavis Sta­ples (few women can say that Bob Dylan has asked them to marry him!), the re­united Bikini Hill (the main ex­po­nent of the riot gr­rrls fem­i­nist move­ment in the 1990s) and the charm­ing cou­ple com­pris­ing ex-The Beau­ti­ful South front­man Paul Heaton (and in his case also The House­martins) and Jacqui Ab­bott.

Bonet, Bad Gyal and Manel

Among the Cata­lan mu­si­cians who will per­form at Pri­mav­era Sound are Maria del Mar Bonet (praised in the fes­ti­val’s pro­mo­tional texts as “the bea­con that has il­lu­mi­nated south­ern Eu­ro­pean song for half a cen­tury”) and the more pre­dictable ap­pear­ances of Manel, Bad Gyal, Núria Gra­ham, Fer­ran Palau and Cha­queta de Chándal, as well as Jordi Valls’ his­toric and ir­rev­er­ent Vagina Den­tata Organ.

A “mul­ti­fac­eted” Sónar

Mean­while, Sónar has been pro­mot­ing this year’s edi­tion of the fes­ti­val as being “mul­ti­fac­eted, fes­tive and global”. The most recog­nis­able name is surely that of British duo The Chem­i­cal Broth­ers, who will be putting on a new im­mer­sive au­dio­vi­sual show at the fes­ti­val to pre­sent their new album, No Ge­og­ra­phy, cre­ated with their close col­lab­o­ra­tor Adam Smith. After her im­pres­sive show last June, the fes­ti­val will also at­tempt to es­tab­lish the Venezue­lan Arca as “the most rad­i­cally in­no­v­a­tive artist in elec­tronic music”, while re­ly­ing heav­ily on tal­ents such as the French duet, The Blaze, and emerg­ing rap­pers Dave and Aj Tracey. In ad­di­tion, the ad­vanced music fes­ti­val will also add De­spa­cio (a club­bing pro­ject by James Mur­phy and 2many­djs that has tri­umphed at Sonar by Day) to its night-time ac­tiv­ity and pre­sent one of the most an­tic­i­pated record re­leases of the year in Cat­alo­nia: the sec­ond full-length album by Badalona na­tive Maria Arnal and Flix-born Mar­cel Bagés, which is based, ac­cord­ing to Sónar, on “elec­tronic beats, syn­the­sis­ers and col­lab­o­ra­tions with im­por­tant fig­ures in the elec­tronic panorama”. This year’s Sónar, which has not yet an­nounced its tech­no­log­i­cal con­tent, wel­comes back Va­len­cian Niño de Elche (who will re­veal a new pro­ject to re­vise the sound legacy of ex­per­i­men­tal film­maker and “Mys­tic ge­nius” José Val del Omar), high­lights a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Car­les Viarnès and vi­sual artist Alba G. Cor­ral, and, through the Sónar XS stage, pre­sents young tal­ents emerg­ing from the mar­gins, such as Morad, a young mu­si­cian of Mo­roc­can ori­gin from the Florida dis­trict of Hos­pi­talet de Llo­bre­gat.