Concert Review: Primavera Sound 2024

With a May 29 pre-show and official festivities starting May 30, Barcelona’s premier three-day festival returned to Parc del Fòrum with a vibrant lineup.

Written by C.S. Harper

Primavera Sound has long been a staple of international live music. Originally founded in 2001 as a showcase of local Spanish bands, Primavera has since blossomed into a franchise that spans the globe, from Los Angeles to Sāo Paulo. This year, big-name headliners such as SZA and Lana Del Rey led the main iteration of the festival, with support from indie mainstays like Balming Tiger and 070 Shake. Here’s a recap of Primavera Sound 2024 to highlight 10 of the most high-profile and under-the-radar sets alike.

Maria Jaume

Opening act Maria Jaume took the daunting task of kicking off Spain’s premier music festival in stride, delivering dance-worthy pop tunes with bubblegum swagger. Though an indie artist at heart, the singer carries hyperpop and reggaetòn influences on her sleeve with her Bad Gyal-esque use of autotune and dembow beats. The Mallorcan songbird effortlessly melded her wide-ranging inspirations to deliver a riveting set that kept the audience on their toes. Jaume cut to the chase by beginning her set with “Autonomia per principiants,” a sunny track from her debut album, Fins a maig no revisc, which reigns as her most streamed song to date. After introducing the crowd to her old acoustic sound, she dived into her hyperpop material with Julieta-assisted earworm “Trista a Miami.” Festival-goers swayed and sang along to the Catalan hook (“Trista, trista, trista a Miami”) as Jaume’s sirenic vocals soared through the crowd. The songstress addressed fans warmly in between songs, expressing amazement at its size and thanking audience members for their presence before performing the closing track, “Pura geografia.” With her Spanish charm and diverse sonic palette, Maria Jaume was the perfect act to give fans a taste of what the festival offers.

Stella Maris

Spain’s own Puig Baró sisters produce meta-ironic Christian pop that blurs the line between piety and blasphemy. To introduce the six-piece, a narration reverberated across the stage, and screens projected low-quality, “graphic design is my passion” images to tell the group members’ origin story as the world’s saviors. Suddenly, the sisters sprinted onstage while donning identical yellow raincoats, which they twirled around as they sang the opening track of their 2023 debut album, “Stella Maris.” Their performance was relentlessly fun and quirky, with free-spirited choreography, numerous outfit changes, and onstage acrobatics. Despite their meticulously crafted stage presence, the group never took itself too seriously. During “La casa huele a Gloria,” for instance, screens flanking the stage showcased grainy images of celebrities named Gloria. Afterward, the bandmates’ mother — Montserrat Puig Baró, who had supposedly died in 2013 — “resurrected” as a procession of actors carried her toward the stage on a velvet red chair. To celebrate their mother’s resurrection, the sisters, their father, a cast of kooky characters, and Montserrat fervently danced to a disco remix of the closing song “La puerta del cielo (Toc toc).” Though an unconventional pick to precede headliner Phoenix, Stella Maris brought entertaining, next-level camp to the Amazon Music stage.

Phoenix

After headlining Primavera Sound 2022, Phoenix returned to Parc del Fòrum to a warm, familiar crowd. “Our lives are dictated by Primavera,” frontman Thomas Mars joked. “It’s our favorite festival.” The Versailles band’s love for the audience was palpable from the start. They kicked things off with fan-favorite “Lisztomania” from their classic fourth record, Wolfang Amadeus Phoenix, which had just turned 15 years old a few days prior. In celebration of this milestone, the group included many of the record’s highlights in the setlist, including “Lasso” and “Rome.” Phoenix performed each track so well that it sounded like they had released the album just yesterday, courtesy of their idiosyncratic synth-pop sound and Mars’ ageless vocals. Although the setlist was similar to that of their 2022 Primavera set, Phoenix kept the audience on their toes by including several medleys and a surprise guest. During the latter half of “If I Ever Feel Better / Funky Squaredance,” Mars kneeled at the feet of a masked, cloaked figure that later revealed itself to be Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend fame. After unmasking, Koenig performed not one, not two, but three songs with Phoenix, including a snippet of his own band’s 2024 track “Prep-School Gangsters” as a special treat. To conclude the night, Mars stepped into the audience to thank them for their presence and crowd-surf for the remainder of the set. By including a surprise guest and plenty of fan interaction, Phoenix asserted their place as a veteran act and showed just why they keep coming back to Primavera Sound.

Day 1

Ángeles, Víctor, Gloria & Javier

The Auditori Rockdelux auditorium exposed listeners to transcendent sonic and visual experiences that don’t fit neatly inside the box of traditional festival stages. One of these bands was Ángeles, Víctor, Gloria & Javier, a quartet that began in 2022 after the members performed together at Madrid’s FIAS festival. As day one’s first act, the group brought flamenco of the avant-garde persuasion to Primavera Sound. Like new flamenco contemporaries Rosalía and María José Llergo, Ángeles, Víctor, Gloria & Javier pair elements of Andalusian folk music with pop and electronic stylings to create a unique genre fusion. Cantaora Ángeles Toledano delivered spine-chilling vocals throughout the set, one highlight being her expert use of vibrato during her performance of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca’s “La guitarra.” But Toledano’s singing ability wasn’t the only element that made the set unique among those at Primavera Sound — the accompanying light show was unlike any other at the festival. Six perfectly synchronized rays of light changed color and shape to create an ethereal feel that complemented the otherworldly sound of tracks like “Paisaje.” With a breathtaking light show and equally beautiful sonics, Ángeles, Víctor, Gloria & Javier proved themselves to be a must-see live band.

Balming Tiger

Indie music collective Balming Tiger brought forward-thinking K-pop to the Pull&Bear stage. Dressed in identical gray windbreakers, five of the group’s members walked onstage at 6:50 p.m. and got in a circular formation as plucky synth notes introduced the January Never Dies track “Kamehameha.” They performed quirky choreography, complete with air punches and a “Ring Around the Rosie” dance, as a flag of their logo waved on the screen behind them. The dancing continued into pre-pandemic singles “Kolo Kolo” and “Armadillo,” during which rapper Omega Sapien encouraged the crowd to throw their hands up and down. After a couple of deep cuts from their aforementioned 2023 debut, the collective’s members got their freak on with the RM collaboration “SEXY NUKIM.” They playfully shushed the crowd before singing the sultry hook in husky growls: “우리 모두 섹시느낌, oh / Communicate, show me 눈빛, oh” (“We’re all sexy, oh / Communicate, show me eyes, oh”). The fivesome continued the “Asian Sexy” and “Asian Cool” themes by surprising the audience with Omega Sapien’s 2019 solo hit “POP THE TAG.” The group members instructed the crowd to separate in two and collide back together by moshing whenever the beat dropped during the chorus. With their natural onstage chemistry and magnetic presence, Balming Tiger delivered a fun-filled set.

Day 2

Lana Del Rey

“Lanita” brought out the most impressive crowd out of any headliner. Ardent fans cheered in anticipation of her appearance as festival workers set up an intricate set composed of arches and vines. After what felt like an eternity, Lanavera Sound officially commenced at 10:10 p.m., almost 30 minutes after Del Rey's original set time. Audience members gasped at Miss Honeymoon’s resplendent beauty as she sang “Without You.” Her showgirl-ish backup dancers were just as breathtaking, as they frolicked around with ostrich fans and delicately twirled on poles to elevate the set's vintage feel. Fans sang every lyric by heart as Del Rey covered all the high points of her discography, from the title tracks of Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Born to Die to underrated gems like “Bartender.” A highlight of the night was the singer's smooth runs toward the end of “Video Games,” leaving audience members pleasantly surprised by her vocal prowess. As if her jazz-inflected live arrangements and jaw-dropping visuals weren't enough to make up for her tardiness, the “Blue Jeans” singer announced that she was “just gonna run [the set]” and perform as many songs as possible. What resulted was an auditory supercut of songs in which every track on the setlist flowed into the next one flawlessly. After performing the latter half of “A&W,” the songstress spent the final minutes of her set hugging, kissing, and exchanging kind words with fans by the barricade. Although Lana cut many songs on the setlist short, her sweet demeanor and swirling baroque instrumentals made for one of the most memorable sets of this year's festival.

Arca

Reggaetón’s favorite diva experimental made a rare festival appearance at the Amazon Music stage. After presenting a series of uncanny valley images from her “Mutant;Destrudo” show, Arca marched onstage with a mic and smoke gun in hand. Dressed like a character straight out of the Mortal Kombat universe, the Venezuelan artist danced along to ROSALÍA collaboration “KLK” while playfully spraying smoke into the crowd. The producer was a relentless force to be reckoned with, climbing on the rails by the stage and throwing herself onto a swing contraption within the elaborate set design. After speeding through her hits, she slowed things down with mid-tempo tracks from her self-titled 2017 album, like “Anoche” and “Reverie.” During these tender moments, Arca flaunted her vocal abilities with her angelic high notes. But the partying and perreo soon resumed with reggaetòn banger “Rakata,” during which the singer astounded fans with her lowest vocal register of the night. Towards the end of her set, she let the crowd choose a song for her to perform, and fans immediately chanted for “Bruja” off KicK iii. After some fan service and a couple more high-energy moments like “I Rip the Slit” and “Mequetrefe,” she left things on a bittersweet note with KiCk i closing ballad, “No Queda Nada.” By showcasing her range as an artist, Arca curated a perfect set for sad girls and guarras alike.

Day 3

070 Shake

Hip-hop's rising stoner-in-chief brought trippy visuals and even more drug-fueled sonics to the Estrella Damm stage. Better known as 070 Shake, Dani Balbuena makes rap and alternative pop so infused in psychedelics that it would shame any Woodstock ’69 hippie. She asserted her place as a rap rebel by throwing a curveball at the audience and beginning her set with a cover of Kanye West's “Violent Crimes” from his polarizing album, ye. A few hazy tracks later, Balbuena acted again as an enfant terrible by commanding the crowd to form a circle during her performance of the Ken Carson collaboration “Natural Habitat.” With each song on the setlist, the audience formed a bigger circle, which dissolved as crowd members moshed and collided into each other. From fans’ rowdy energy to the pill-popping, powder-snorting visuals that accompanied “Under the Moon,” Balbuena put on a scintillating psychedelic fantasy. However, the crowd was brought out of its daze when the singer's mic got cut halfway through her performance of her hit song “Guilty Conscience” after her set ran almost 15 minutes over time. Though fans were disappointed, Balbuena took things in stride and made a final impression by sticking her tongue out at a camera and tossing her mic into the audience. Despite the anti-climactic ending to 070 Shake's set, her lovable misfit personality more than made up for it.

SZA

At 12:10 a.m., this year’s final headliner materialized on the Santander stage through clouds of smoke. The fashionably late singer conveyed a shipwrecked fantasy with her tattered two-piece dress and intricate boat-shaped set as she sang “Seek & Destroy” to a sea of cheers. The First Lady of TDE followed up with back-to-back performances of SOS and Ctrl tracks, with the occasional collaboration (“Kiss Me More,” “All the Stars,” and “Rich Baby Daddy”). Instead of attempting to create a unique experience for Primavera Sound, SZA essentially rehashed her “SOS” tour, with almost identical set design and costumes and little variation to the setlist. To add to the disappointment for fans expecting her to veer away from her SOS-era aesthetics, the singer seemed to be having trouble with her live vocals. During crowd-pleasing songs like “Snooze,” she often stopped to clear her throat or adjust her earpieces and let the audience sing for her. When she did sing, her vocals came out flat, possibly strained from a year of touring to promote her second album. Despite the lowlights, the silver linings were her performance of “Saturn” to tease her upcoming record Lana and her inclusion of Ctrl closer “20 Something” in the encore. Given all of her set’s mishaps, here’s hoping that Solána will take the time to rest and return to Primavera once Lana drops.

Charli XCX

Charli XCX didn’t just deliver a festival set — she made the Amazon Music stage her rave. Wearing an all-white ensemble and Matrix-esque sunglasses, the pop superstar promptly stormed onstage at 2:30 a.m. At the same time, a clubby remix of her then-unreleased song “365” played, and an enormous green banner dropped to reveal the word “brat.” She wasted no time instructing the audience to put their “hands up” and climb on each other’s shoulders, and the rowdy crowd eagerly obliged as the opening arpeggios of “360” rang. Charli’s set was filled with unforgettable moments, such as her cover of Caroline Polachek’s “Welcome to My Island” and her live debut of “Everything is romantic.” While introducing the latter, Charli announced, “This is my new song from my new album, BRAT, the best album of the year,” to a sea of cheers. Despite the singer’s boastful attitude, she never came off as brash and ensured the crowd members had the time of their lives. “Don’t play with me, Barcelona,” she teased as audience members jumped, danced, and belted their hearts out. After back-to-back performances of Brat songs, Charli brought throwback moments with hits like “Boys,” “1999,” and “Vroom Vroom.” To close things off, the PC Music affiliate took fans on a trip down memory lane by performing her breakout hit, Icona Pop’s “I Love It.” Then — as quickly as she came onstage — the singer thanked the crowd for partying with her and vanished. Although Charli cut her set 20 minutes short, she hyped up the audience for Brat and brought us all forward to “2099.”