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Radiohead

Jun 09, 2016 By Dan Lucas Photography by Eric Pamies/Primavera Sound 2016 Primavera Sound Festival

“If the sun comes up and I still don’t want to stagger home, then it’s the memory of our betters that are keeping us on our feet.” When James Murphy wrote “All My Friends” he might not have been thinking specifically about the Primavera Sound festival. Nonetheless, when LCD Soundsystem close out their Thursday night—well, Friday morning really—headline set, you know that it’s times like this the song has always meant to evoke.

LCD are the clear highlight of the festival’s first official night but only because Primavera has done such a perfect job of teeing them up. Earlier in the evening Air sounded beautiful, though they perhaps suffered from the decision to load their best-known songs—“Sexy Boy”, “Kelly Watch the Stars,” and “La Femme d’Argent”—at the very end of their set. Explosions in the Sky on the other hand are loud, tight and euphoric: when a group in the crowd light sparklers and rain down it creates as perfect a visual as you could want for the furious energy of Michael James, Munaf Rayani, and Mark Smith’s guitars.

All of this follows a first day that has left us tired and emotional. After rising at four in the morning on Wednesday to travel from London, a delayed flight means a short nap on the plane is the only rest I’m getting between landing and meeting friends and colleagues for food and drinks. It also brings an early trip to Parc del Fòrum: concrete jungle the site may be, but its glorious ocean vista make up for that as much as the entertainment on offer—tonight from Goat and Suede.

The former begin slowly despite stage visuals that resemble something from Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man, but grow into a solid opener for Brett Anderson and co. There’s no hanging around for one of the Britpop era’s greatest singles bands: “Outsiders,” “Introducing the Band,” “Trash,” and “Animal Nitrate” are all dropped early and the neither the lithe frontman nor the setlist relent as they close out with “The Beautiful Ones” and “She’s in Fashion.”

Back to Thursday then, and by the time Murphy and New York’s reconvened finest take to the stage, a little after 1am the immense, densely packed crowd has been prepared for an emotional experience; the band duly deliver. You wanted a hit? Well maybe they don’t do hits, but they do almost every fan favorite. “Us v Them,” “Daft Punk is Playing at My House,” “Tribulations,” and “Dance Yrself Clean” are powerful, energetic and meaty, while “Someone Great” and “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” pack the devastating punches before that finale is a climactic outpouring of feelings for all. This is less triumphant return, more the sound of a group who never stopped being important.

Nevertheless, when it comes to the clear highlight of the week, LCD Soundsystem are like everyone else: trailing in Radiohead’s wake. Flying high on the back of glowing reviews for new album A Moon Shaped Pool, the Oxford quintet played on the Friday night to a crowd that dwarfed anything the festival had ever seen. Stretching the length of five soccer fields between the Heineken and H&M stages, the audience was thought to be somewhere between 70,000 and 90,000 strong; we arrived an hour and a half early to get to within 100 metres of the front. And for once, Radiohead put on a show just for them.

As usual on this tour, they opened with the first five songs from the latest album in order, the orchestral parts rearranged for guitar and bass; “Burn the Witch” became a heavier, guitar-led groove, “Daydreaming” reduced the audience to astonished silence and “Ful Stop” becomes a thick groove. Thereafter, though, “The Numbers” was the only new song—the more oblique material eschewed in favour of a career-spanning set.

This was a real crowd-pleaser. The Bends era was represented by “Street Spirit” and its B-side “Talk Show Host,” while the three biggest hits from OK Computer—“No Surprises,” “Karma Police,” and “Paranoid Android”—saw Thom Yorke struggle to keep the volume louder than a deliriously delighted crowd. Similarly, the choice of “Idioteque,” “The National Anthem,” and “Everything in its Right Place” from Kid A would seem like fan service had the songs not played been just as good.

Two songs from each of their last three albums, plus a beautiful-as-ever “Pyramid Song”— going from “No Surprises” into this did indeed leave my heart full up like a landfill and several people donned dark sunglasses to obscure the tears—might have made this a near-perfect set, but it seemed Yorke had miscalculated how long they had. They closed the night with an impromptu “Creep”: good luck following that tomorrow, Sigur Rós.

The rest of the Friday night line-up had the wind knocked out of its sails. Earlier in the day one of the Beach Club DJs (it might have been Bradford Cox, we couldn’t really tell) had raised the biggest cheer of the early evening with a surprise remix of Toto’s magnificent slice of cheese “Africa” and shoegaze legends Lush sounded fantastic on the hidden stage despite a crowd more concerned with complaining that tall people had had the temerity to turn up. Later on though, Animal Collective sounded muted and flat and played a poorly-chosen, short set. More disappointing still were The Avalanches: when you’re essentially playing a DJ set with “Frontier Psychiatrist” tacked on the end (and “Since I Left You” unforgivably left out), you haven’t really earned the right to be abandoning station and hugging each other just for pressing play.

It’s 6am by the time I’ve managed to get back to the hotel and into bed. Still, there is nothing that’s going to keep me away from the early evening show from Brian Wilson, easily the most enjoyable act on show on the Saturday. It’s billed as Pet Sounds in full but, given the masterpiece’s sub-35-minute runtime, there is plenty more on show on this final tour of the album.

Wilson—understandably—has a reputation as an erratic performer these days but he is in fine fettle here. Smiling and joking with the crowd, his voice sounds stronger than it has at any point in the past decade. He’s joined by fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine and former band-mate Blondie Chaplin on guitar, as well as Jardine’s son Matt. The latter’s voice is a particular revelation, an uncanny recreation of a younger Wilson’s falsetto on the likes of “Wouldn’t it be Nice” and “Caroline, No.” Wilson himself gets the tears flowing again from the moment the opening notes of “God Only Knows” chime out.

The final hour or so of the set is simply breathtaking. It’s an outpouring of some of the finest pop music that will ever be written, delivered with breathtaking accomplishment to a jubilant crowd who are tossing beach balls and balloons about with gleeful abandon. “Good Vibrations” opens the set, hit after Beach Boys hit follows and there’s a playful cover of “Monster Mash” thrown in on the way to a closing run of “California Girls,” “I Get Around,” “Help Me Rhonda,” “Surfin’ USA,” and “Fun Fun Fun.”

Up next are Deerhunter and they sound fantastic, playing a Halcyon Digest-heavy set. But there’s no way they can compete with Wilson and for many—yes, me included—exhaustion has set in before PJ Harvey and Sigur Rós come out to close out the festival.

I am a broken man, a cracked polystyrene man, who has crumbled and burned in Barcelona’s heat. It’s a beautiful, emotional place. It can’t come around again soon enough.

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