Trying to write a review for Primavera Sound 2022 while on an emotional comedown is a real coñazo it has to be said. The ten-day festival, it’s first edition since 2019, shut up shop yesterday after a mammoth twelve-day extravaganza which saw it return to Barcelona’s Parc Del Forum. This year it also expanded its sights, and sites, and took over the city’s local haunts as well. This meant you had Megan Thee Stallion not only headlining one of the main stages on Saturday night but also popping down to the local 2,000-capacity Razzmatazz for her most intimate show in years. And who doesn’t want to be intimate with Meg?!
But we’re not here to get bogged down in the stats and the numbers, we’re here to tell you what a fucking great time it was. The festival kicked off on 1st June with intimate shows from The Linda Lindas, Wet Leg & Rina Sawayama, all giving you their take on Rock from the 50s, 90s & 00s respectively, and taking us back to Poble Espanyol where the festival started back in 2001.
Megan Thee Stallion at Razzmatazz as part of Primavera Sound 2022.
Photo Credit: Sharon Lopez
The following day the main venue, Parc Del Forum opened its gates. There were initial reports of overcrowding & lack of water, but we rolled down there two hours later and there was officially no drama to be seen. The crowd had only a good time on their mind. Loverboy officially began our Primavera 2022 experience with all the feels of Fred Again playing the Cupra stage, a supercute amphi-theatre with a view of the sea behind it. We’ve been waiting two long years for a Fred Again live situation, that’s a lot of tears to hold up inside – and trust they were released at both his Weekend 1 and Weekend 2 shows! We’ve just signed up to join his Discord channel so we’re basically waiting for Fred to ask us for an Audio Note at this point. That first night we also enjoying twerking with Bad Gyal & raving with Honey Dijon until gone 4am. Werk.
Fred Again at Primavera Sound 2022.
Photo Credit: Sergio Albert
Other Weekend 1 highlights were the most followed drag queen in the world, Pabllo Vittar. We’d spoken to her earlier this year and she promised she had some surprises in store but seeing her perform, on one of her biggest European dates, during Pride month no less, was everything we needed. Well, until we saw Caroline Polachek slay the Plenitude Stage the next day. We chilled and chatted and got hyped with her other fans pre-show and she officially has the nicest ones all wearing Caroline’s trademark Fantasy-Heroine-Enchanted-Princess vibes with heavy eye-liner, angel wings, fairy glitter and some devil horns. Caroline was serving up her unique choreo across the stage and knocking out the hits from her most recent album, Pang and casually playing some track called ‘Bunny Is A Rider’. Pitchfork named it as their track of 2021, maybe you know it…?!
That weekend we also lived for Jenny Hval in the indoor Auditori Rockdelux, which had seating, dark lights and everything. We enjoyed the seating so much we stayed on for the love-fest that was Mavis Staples. She was scatting all over the stage at the age of 82, y’all. After we saw DIIV, Beach House and finished the night with Disclosure who took us all the way back to 2013 and consequently one of our Primavera 2022 highlights.
This year Primavera took over the city with Primavera a la Ciutat and on Sunday night we decided to go check out Beach Bunny and Lost Girls. With limited capacity and no guaranteed entry, you had to be willing to queue for the Ciutat shows. But that just made it fair for everyone and to be honest, some of our festival highlights this year were sitting in a queue for three hours talking to others about the festival and swapping recommendations. Although there was that one German guy trying to get competitive with his opinions, but we managed to shake him off!
Dua Lipa performing at Primavera Sound.
Photo Credit: Christian Bertrand.
Dua Lipa kicked off Primavera’s Weekend 2 and although we’d seen her headline tour a few weeks previously, seeing her at a festival was something else. Being a small part of this enormous body of people, all screaming along to ‘The One’ was pretty special. One act we had been holding out to see for, like, forever, was Bicep although sadly their set never seemed to fully take off. Their BPM was destined to remain at a very sensible seventy-six beats per minute.
The Friday of Weekend 2 was destined to be the night we officially lost it as we watched Grimes obliterate the Tous stage. We are not ones for over-selling something (Us, dear?!) but this was the one of the best live sets we have seen in our very long lives. She didn’t take her foot off the pedal and the intensity was all kinds of extreme. As soon as she knocked out COBRAH’s ‘Good Puss’, it was on! Before Grimes, we’d seen Sama’ Abdulhadi who deserves a shout-out and post-Grimes, we lost our shit all over again to Black Coffee.
Sky Ferreira at Primavera Sound 2022.
Photo Credit: Sharon Lopez.
By the time Saturday rolled around we were amazed we were still standing. We were basically running on adrenaline and Grimes’ beat from the day before. But if Disclosure transported us back to our happy place of 2013 during Weekend 1 then that role was taken over by Sky Ferreira for Saturday Weekend 2, dropping all her hits and previewing upcoming material – we’re excited to see what’s next. She may have had the best time on the Binance stage that night with technical difficulties but there was only love coming from the audience.
We also caught Yeah Yeah Yeahs for the first time and it was worth the wait, before catching Fred Again…yes, again and then Angele & Jessie Ware which was like a Homecoming show…but in Spain. An emotional way to end an incredible week.
After three years of Primavera there was nervous energy at the beginning about whether anyone could actually remember how to ‘festival’ again. But from the organisation, the performances, the reactions, we all managed to turn the clocks back three years and just fucking breathe again! A Primavera Awakening!
