Thursday 28/05/09 Primavera Sound Festival, Day One @ Parc Del Forum, Barcelona

Some kids over the road were happily setting off cherry bombs as we dragged ourselves out of bed to prepare for the first day of the festival proper. You see, on Wednesday 27th – the day before Primavera Sound – Barcelona erupted into a war zone. All it took was a cheeky Sam Eto’o toe-poke and a clinical Lionel Messi header to clinch the first treble Spain has ever seen for the club who has perhaps deserved it longer than any other.

But I’m talking football, and we’re here for rock music, right? Primavera Sounds is like a Spanish ATP with the Grange Hill nostalgia of Butlins chalets replaced by the eery stillness of the Parc Del Forum, and the blissful ridiculousness of the old Camber Sands beach replaced by the brazen flesh party of Barcelona’s man-made beach.

The music is pretty much the same – there’s even an ATP stage at Primavera, where Lightning Bolt are playing when we make our first sweep of the site. And yes, they are playing on a stage. The inevitable has happened: they caved. They grew up (a bit) and now they play safe sets on stages. Their sets are still crazed bang-ups but the magic has dissipated some.

Then perhaps fittingly it’s over to Marnie Stern to kick things off tapping and yelping her way through a dynamite set of hits, while her enigmatic bassist smolders before thanking the crowd and saying “I never thought we’d be doing this, you have no idea!”

Over on the Rockdelux stage we catch a glimpse of the reformed Vaselines, just in time to hear Molly’s Lips before returning to the ATP  stage for a strangely compelling set of balls out of the bath rock music from legends The Jesus Lizard. They are tight as hell and  despite the weakness of David Yow’s voice these days, they still rock hard and fast and he finds the time to throw himself into the crowd head first.

Our first visit to the Pitchfork stage is another welcome surprise as The Bug produce the best dance action of the fest so far. Flow Dan spits some incomprehensible jams while the beats bounce like my non-international bankcard. It was a shame when they were cut short during Poison Dart, but that said, it didn’t have the same punch without Warrior Queen’s vox on it. Then it’s over to the ‘Main’ stage (Primavera doesn’t really do ‘Main’ but this is the one Neil Young is playing on Friday and so I suppose this is it) for an impressive, if stunted slice of another of the festival’s reformers; MBV, before heading back to Pitchfork for the days big winner: Ponytail.

Molly and co. put in a storming set of genuine party tunes reducing us en masse into a writhing mess. 7 Souls, Beg Waves and Late For School all set smiles alight, and when I throw my arm around Molly and tell her “that was an AWESOME set, you guys rock!” later on in the night, I fucking mean it dammit!

Post-Ponytail we freaked out to some smashing visuals from Aphex Twin including murmuring references to Windowlicker before witnessing part of the now fabled Wavves breakdown and then spiralling off into the night chatting Champions League could have beens with Spanish folks on the metro. Good start for sure!

Primavera Sound Festival 2009: