Music Crush Monday: Lorde x Primavera Sound Music Festival
Lorde played to a packed field this past weekend as the closing act of the Primavera Sound festival here in Los Angeles.
Primavera Sound is a famous music festival that originated in Barcelona, 2022 marks the first time the festival has come to Los Angeles. We had fun checking out Lorde, The Nine Inch Nails, James Blake and more as we traipsed from one end of the festival to the other. KCRW held a three day long swapmeet, which ranged from fun art finds to vinyls. Primavera Sound was held in downtown LA’s Historic Park. The best bit was being able to drive to downtown and then drive home to sleep in our own beds. Why aren’t more music festivals held in LA? It’s not like we have a shortage of people to attend festivals or spaces to hold them. More of this please.
Primavera Sound’s inaugural edition took place in Barcelona back in 2001. Primavera Sound had a heavily curated, forward-thinking selection of music. The genres represented some of the most exciting artists around, ranging from the pop universe to the fringes of genres. A great example of musical ranges is Lorde closing day one, followed by us catching Drain Gang which read like the sound-cloud fandom sad boy music counter-part to the Autumnal sad girl tunes that take over the internet from September to November.
During Saturday night’s closing sets, a Northern Ireland duo Bicep, were a major electronic highlight; their visuals felt high budget and had us dreaming of club days under Ibiza’s moon. The majority of Primavera Sound’s extensive lineup came from countries outside of the United States, making the music festival’s lineups one of the most diverse of the year. There were numerous Spanish, South American, and Mexican artists, as well as standout additions from places like Japan (Chai), Sweden (Drain Gang -shout out to our Sad Boy music), and Barcelona (Bad Gyal).
The under 21 rule was weird. If you weren’t of age this wasn’t the festival for you. Primavera Sound’s layout carved out the majority of each stage’s field space for attendees that were 21 and older, with the under-21 folks being reserved for a significantly smaller, cornered-off section. It’s unknown whether this was done to keep underage drinking to a minimum? Does that even work at festivals? Perhaps this was just under the vague idea of keeping people safe, but regardless of the festival’s intention, it didn’t work and made for awkward stops when you were heading from one stage to another.
It’s impossible to miss how Primavera Sounds’ approach to live music has been nothing if not influential in the music festival world. For fans of Lorde, Primavera has upcoming artists like PinkPanteress (who performed with her pursed tucked to her side), to more established indie artists like Mitski creating a full circle approach to finding new music you’ll love. What does that mean? It means the organizers know what they’re doing. By including big acts who have large followings on the days when newer or more indie artists who create within their similar music genre come perform earlier, helps to create a direct link to new fans finding music from artists that may have been undiscovered to them. This is a fantastic way to link music festivals to genre days and letting fans get their fill of their favorites while discovering new artists within those same genres, and sub genres of music.
Make sure to check out our Instagram here for recaps of the weekend.
