Thursday
Primavera was for the spring babies, with Troye Sivan, Chappell Roan’s bandmate Ali, and beabadoobee’s frontwoman Beatrice Laus all celebrating their birthdays in early June. “I just turned 25 three days ago, does that make me old?” Beatrice asks the crowd, midway through a pleasing starter before we get into the meat of Thursday’s offering. Peppered with the inexperience of youth, it’s a set sprinkled with false starts – “It’s almost been three years since we released our third album – bollocks, our first album” and there’s definitely a domineering flavour of those that came before: her band alone smacks of No Doubt if Gwen Stefani was out back having a cigarette. But, the positive tasting notes are there in the queer-coded ‘She Plays Bass’, with the camera crew working overtime to zoom in on alt-looking gay girlies, and ‘Sunny Day’, where the snare was al dente and the acoustic arpeggios were proper summertime fodder.
As the sun starts to dip and the post-meal fatigue threatens to take over, IDLES came by to wake us up. “¡VIVA PALESTINA!” crowed the pink-haired frontman Joe Talbot throughout their high-energy set. This is a punk band that puts their money where their mouth is when it comes to platforming issues they care about – but is it ironic that they stood underneath the Revolut stage insignia as they snarled “the best way to scare a Tory is to read then get rich”? Looking like Rhys Ifans three days into a k-hole, Talbot ploughed through fan favourites including ‘Mr. Motivator’, ‘Mother’, and ‘Danny Nedolko’. Talbot is an unapologetic frontman, knowing when to push and when to pull, screaming for the moshpit to open up and making a cheeky nod to Charli XCX’s ‘Guess’ as the band’s dress-clad guitarist flashed his underwear while surging over the crowd’s heads. As far as mains go, IDLES offered plenty to chew on despite being let down by a lack of bass compared to all the other acts on either of the twin stages. Adam Devonshire brought snake hips that could rival Este HAIM’s notorious bass face, and the drumming was primal (like HAIM’s, often shared by multiple members of the band) – and yet you wouldn’t have known that based on the feeling of the sound system in the crowd. IDLES make music that should rattle ribcages and heads; that the bass of picante pop princess Sabrina Carpenter packed ten times the punch sadly is an indicator of how underserved the band was by the mix.
With the blood still dripping from the maws of the IDLES moshpit, you could be forgiven for thinking that a waif of a woman like FKA twigs would leave the crowd wanting, but her theatrical tripartite set was truly all-consuming. Art pop, like fine dining, can have a reputation for leaving punters hungry; but when it’s done well it can be transcendental. The immersive experience comprised of Act I: Practice, Act II: State of Being and Act III: The Pinnacle. twigs’ breathy and sensual – but never gratuitously sexual – vocals and tightly choreographed dance sequences were interpolated with slick pole routines that had the crowd eating from her open palm. It’s like she saw the internet lose their minds over Taylor Swift on a chair, and said hold my Estrella, damn.
At this point in the meal, it’s clear that some people have over-imbibed; note the puffy eyes, pink cheeks, and Aperol stains on white linen shirts. If you were going to give the AUX to anyone at the party, the British king of samples and well-regarded alt-dance darling, Jamie xx would be high on most of this crowd’s list. He plugged in, they chewed on and 90 minutes later we could say that something had happened. Outside of ‘KILL DEM’, ‘Loud Places’ and closer ‘Baddy on the Floor’, the set was bassy filler rather than dancefloor killer. Seasoned with recognisable singles and UK garage riffs and vox pops, there was enough here for the crowd to move to but unless you were in the mood to masticate cheek to cheek with raging, sloshed strangers this was a course you could easily skip.
Primavera Barcelona’s 2025 lineup felt like a D&I officer’s wet dream; it was female-heavy, had plenty of LGBTQ+ representation, and refreshingly, not everyone was white. Not so refreshing was the fact there was no liquid to be found anywhere – there were whispers of a drought in Barcelona and it felt a bit like Fyre Festival trying to source free refillable water between Jamie xx and Charli XCX’s sets; there were fake queues, and security guards promising an oasis only for the reality to be peoples’ hands grabbing at waterless dispensers through Heras fencing – picture the second episode of series two of The Last of Us where Abby flees the zombie horde.
“Are you ready to sweat?” asks Troye, at the start of the Australian’s joint set with party girl Charli. It felt mocking to say the least. We would if we could, Troye. Friday’s headline act was arguably the most hyped, and yet the biggest let down from the weekend. A joint-tour makes sense, given the duo’s collaborations on hits such as ‘talk talk’ and ‘1999’, but the reality for punters was a stop-start smattering of songs from each artist’s discography and the occasional onstage overlap. How do you follow up FKA twigs’ performance? Probably not like this.
After twigs’ carefully choreographed moves, any twerk-inspired dancing just felt gratuitous and awkward. Both Charli and Troye had dancers on stage, but only Troye was able to interact with his. The duo openly declared how drunk they were, but they needn’t have bothered, as their sloppiness was self-evident. At one point holding a glass white wine aloft, Charli looked like your neighbour Karen doing karaoke. It’s safe to say Charli might be fun on a night out, but that alone isn’t worth €350+. We headed home for the day unsatisfied and hungry for more from the following evening’s proceedings…