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Saturday

The sun was really shining Saturday and I made my way to the forum by way of bike along the Barceloneta beach. I arrived to Real Estate’s set that took me back to another kind of paradise…my hometown of Ridgewood, NJ. Real Estate has the beachy summer sounds that made a perfect pair to the sunny saturday in Barcelona. The afternoon crowd responded to the good feel jams and lyrics “Budweiser, Sprite, Do you feel alright?” while the band was purely giddy to be at Primavera Sound bassist Alex Bleeker announcing “this whole thing is awesome”. I caught a brief set by Atlas Sound who did a nice acoustic rendition of his songs off Logos – even bringing “Walkabout” to life despite the absence of the song’s addictive backing sample.

Next I layed out on a viewing tower behind the field of the San Miguel stage to take in the set from Florence + The Machine. Not familiar with much of their material before the festival, the set was a welcome surprise. More fun pop the anything else, the young brit Florence Welch, lifted her catchy hits off debut album Lungs with her commanding voice rising across the field and bringing in the barcelona sunset.

I last saw Grizzly Bear three years ago at the Pitchfork festival in Chicago, and despite exquisitely sharp songs from the band’s debut Yellow House I left dissapointed. Their sound just didn’t seem to produce on a festival stage like it did on album. As they took the the Ray-Ban stage, it was clear that their ability to captivate a festival crowd has significantly improved, Further their deeper arsenal of hits like Two Weeks and Southern Point satiated the crowd relaxing across the amphitheater.

Built to Spill delivered a tight set at the ATP stage filled with their driven slacker indie jams spanning across albums. BTS a band that influenced my affinity for “indie”, closed out Primavera Sound for me on a high note and reminded me to keep supporting emerging independent artists this year – many of whom will take the stage for Primavera Sound 2011