Super Bock Super Rock is a three-day event which takes place annually in the auroral moonscape of Lisbon’s Parque das Naçoes— all blinding, towering concrete and glass, framed by cable cars bobbing daintily along over the river— and draws several thousand attendees each year. 2018’s big names include Travis Scott, Anderson .Paak and Julian Casablancas. My experience of such events thus far (non-extensive, I’ve been to two) has been consummately proletarian; my home is the mass, the interminable bar queue, the cloakroom scrum, the bit right at the back of a throbbing crowd where you get wedged between a railing and a bucket-hatted confrère making explosive requests in your ear for a line. And now I’m staying in the type of hotel, five minutes from the venue, where the towels are folded with such machinelike tightness they have to be prised apart before use and toting a Wristband which allows me to run rampant over the festival’s topology.
On Day 1 I catch Australian disco group Parcels as well as the humdrum Temples, all of whom look like Noel Fielding from a distance, delightful Portuguese punk trio Vaiapraia e as Rainhas do Baile, The Vaccines, and, after dinner, Lee Fields & The Expressions. Later I drag the French photographer-type I’ve befriended to see The xx.
“They are a shitty band, Jamie. They play just the three chords and complain.” My enthusiasm isn’t much greater, but I tell him that as a reporter I’m obligated to see as many headliners as possible. It’s an accomplished performance of course, but I do wish I’d just been to see Jamie xx DJ. The set’s most vital moments, all too brief, come when the instrumentation falls away and all that remains are imposing, earth-shaking beats.
Day 2 is the undeniable highlight. We take in a mid-afternoon performance from DC rapper Oddisee, who’s witty and buoyant. But things really get going as the evening deepens with the first act on my bucket list, Princess Nokia, and I’ll just say it: midway through the set she quietened her DJ and the fans to give an a cappella rendition of Blink 182’s ‘I Miss You’ . Playing to a sizeable, hearteningly diverse and gender-representative crowd, the rapper (real name Destiny Frasqueri) opened in storming fashion with a string of bludgeoning tracks from her breakout 1992 Deluxe including fan favourites ‘Kitana’ and ‘Brujas.’ Alone on the stage save for her DJ and a towering screen playing vintage New York scenes, the Harlem-born Rough Trade signee wasted no time in demonstrating intimidating rap chops on ‘Tomboy’, a blistering and syntactically demanding paean to self-assurance, New York life and, in the words of the artist herself, “having no titties.” As she karate kicks her way across the stage, the screamed rap-along from the assembled devotees (I’m proposing we call this group “Nokiaficionados”) rivals the volume of the music itself.
With the droves still dazed from this opening salvo, Nokia rushes offstage in search of beer. Moments later she’s back, pouring Super Bock from a height into her open mouth and then spitting it all over her front-row adorers, a move that’s become a signature and elicits ever-greater frenzies. “Lisbon, I am looking for some weed,” she drawls between songs. “If you are selling it, I have money.” She hops offstage and gets in the crowd’s collective face, rapping up and down the bouncing rows, exchanging lines. Somebody passes her a joint, and, after taking it with a wink, she’s inundated with such a profusion of follow-up offers from all sides she has to ask that everybody stop because she’s worried they’ll burn each other.
The crowd cools off slightly as Frasqueri moves into material from her latest project, the hotly debated emo- and pop-punk-tinged mixtape A Girl Cried Red. There are still plenty of diehards hollering every word, but the newer songs can’t help but look energy-sapped next to such a bloodthirsty opening. However, that Blink cover, delivered with plenty of humour, can only be called a triumph.
My next priority is Anderson .Paak, and it’s over to 20,000-capacity Altice Arena, a colossal wood-framed mushroom and the largest venue in Portugal, for the purpose. I decide that it’s the time to properly put my Press Wristband through its paces and we enter the “VIP guest” section, which is front-stage, in touching distance of the impressively bored security guards. It’s also the perfect spot to clutch urgently at your favourite artist as he or she descends for a few minutes of effusive crowd-brushing. Later on somebody will attempt to drag Julian Casablancas bodily into the throng and the guards will intervene. .Paak delivers an ebullient, rollicking performance, beginning the set with his recent hit ‘Bubblin’ before leaping behind the drumkit for a string of tracks from the 2016 album Malibu. I’ve never seen .Paak live before, online or otherwise, and his is musicianship of the frankly confounding type. His voice alone is an oddity, pretty and elastic one moment and a hard-edged rap sneer the next. Not to be outdone, his band the Free Nationals each get their spotlight moment, including a downright charming extended vocoder interlude by keyboardist Ron Tnava Avant. It’s a dazzling, supremely confident set full of psychedelic flourishes and accompanied by appropriately cosmic visuals. How .Paak kept a knit beanie on for the entire thing remains a mystery.
My seventeen year old self takes the reins for the next act of the night. It’s new father Travis Scott, and he’s a difficult performer to write about properly. Yes, he’s got mountains of energy and yes, nobody could really deny that every track is really banging, but, knowing that barring a massive technical failure it’s literally impossible for him to hit a bum note brings a low-stakes feel to the proceedings. He makes up for it with a giant cube (which I thought was a reference to the Kaaba at Mecca, but it’s a novelty screen), banks of flamethrowers and sheer volume. It’s numbingly, shatteringly loud, the kind of sound that leaps down your throat and energetically rearranges your innards. I’m very glad that I nipped into a pharmacy for plugs at the nearby Centro Vasco da Gama a couple of hours earlier.
Closing the festival’s third and final day Julian Casablancas and The Voidz (or just “The Voidz” now, but it remains very much Casablancas’ stage). Accompanied by a hilarious mullet-sporting guitarist who at first glance is easily mistaken for Kirin J Callinan, Julian stomps about and, plagued with sound issues throughout, bellows with near-total inaudibility about what I have read is modern life, American politics and the ominous trajectories of the world’s post-industrial societies. The technical difficulties might render the lyrics formless abstractions, but we can tell he’s in impressive voice, gamely tackling plenty of drawn-out high notes, delivering snarls and yelps with apposite grit.
Super Bock Super Rock 2019 is on 18 - 20 July. Keep an eye on its Facebook and on Gigwise as line-up details emerge.
