PRIMAVERA SOUND – THURSDAY

Here is a photo of  The XX. We would put more but they didn’t give us a photo pass, bummer.

Surfer Blood

I was pretty amped to see these guys after all the hype they’ve  been getting lately, and musically they didn’t disappoint, the energy from the crowd was pretty low however, which I guess you can expect on a Thursday at 7pm when half the public haven’t showed up yet and the other half are not yet sufficiently wasted to do anything but shuffle. The band worked it,  but it was pretty obvious they weren’t getting much back from the crowd, and with the exception of the wonky legs keyboard guy getting funky with his tom and cowbell setup, it turned into a pretty  quiet show with only the single “swim” managing to get any hands at all in the air. All in all really good show, really shitty timeslot.

With a moment of time to kill I checked out Crocodiles in the Ray-Ban Unplugged “stage”  where they timewarped us back to some summery 60´s sing along place where we got all cozy until they had to finish up. It might have had something to do with the fact that the whole band had sunglasses on, or maybe that was just marketing. Either way I´d way rather buy a Crocodiles record than a pair of Raybans. So on to

The XX

Whoa! this was packed, a lot of people obviously came out for this one. Sporting less than their usual amount of shiny chains The XX got off to a decent start, I don´t know if it´s because they’ve only got 1 album out but they really know all their tracks inside out and played them impeccably. They played well, yea, but it seemed like they hadn´t warmed up until the rain started falling, and from then until the end of the show they just got better and kept giving me goosebumps until the strobing, cymbal-bashing thunder bass end of the show. Fucking great, but whoever thought of playing an XX remix as the band was still leaving the stage can suck it.

Wild Beasts

Nothing more than a quick hola, and Wild Beasts launched straight into “Booty Call”, The crowd had obviously warmed up by this point because there were hands a-waving and feet a-shuffling for the whole show. Hayden Thorpe and
Tom Fleming switched positions so often that I lost count, but so smooth that I wouldn´t have notices if I wasn´t looking at the stage. By the time they started into “Hooting and Howling” it was all fist pumping and foot stomping madness. Great show.

Another moment before The Books started so we swung by Broken Social Scene, who actually suprised me a lot and dropped a rock opus of a show with 5 guitars, lying down solos, and Owen Pallet stepping out to join them on violin. A Supernice suprise of a show.

The Books

Armed with miles of seemingly mundane handycam footage mixed and matched to the music and playing on a screen behind them, these guys played sitting down, to a tiny and quiet crowd, and managed to pull out one of the best shows of the night with their sincere and intense performance, super lo-fi but with a massive sound. Go see them if you can.

Sleigh Bells

To be honest I was pretty smashed by this point, but Sleigh Bells went balls out, pulled off my party hat and rearranged it into a pair of dancin’ shoes, Just the thing for this time of night and a welcome contrast to all the 90′s rocking going on, it feels great when a group gives it all for you, the crowd loved it, they loved it, I loved it. It was all happy (and very noisy) times until they finished and I skipped everthing else to piss off home.

Thanks for listening, more tomorrow.