b-seen Events
Primavera Sound 2023
Twin Cities
Although plans were just announced last year it’s already a reality. The expansion of Primavera Sound is arriving at Spain’s capital, over two weekends an almost identical line-up will take the stage in Barcelona and Madrid, with a definite emphasis on the classics of the 80s and 90s as headliners, as well as a few more recent hip hop stars and giants such as the universally popular artist known as Rosalía.
Both festivals will also have parallel performances in smaller venues, under the Spring in the City programme, an alternative to last year's experiment of the back-to-back weekends in Barcelona, which had some organisational glitches on the first day and beat the attendance record for this well-established multinational event. In Barcelona it’s taking place this year between May 29th till June 4th and is once again being held at the Parc del Fórum, while in Madrid it’s happening between June 5th and 11th, in the town of Arganda del Rey, in the same venue where some years ago the Spanish edition of Rock in Rio was held.
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Atmosphere Primavera Sound Barcelona. Ph: Gaelle Beri
Let's see it’s bulky programme a bit:
The Holy Trinity of Synth Pop.
A curious fact this year is that among the headliners are three of the most important technopop bands of the 80s: Pet Shop Boys who will headline the free date on Wednesday, and have been presenting a greatest hits show coinciding with the soon edition of an exhaustive compilation of singles that covers his entire career until 2020 and that will be called Smash. New Order headline Thursday night and, curiously, they headlined a joint tour last year with PSB in the USA, and from which a show focused on nostalgia and the occasional memory of Joy Division is also expected. Depeche Mode debut at the festival on Friday night, and come to present their acclaimed new work Memento Mori, in which they exorcise the ghosts of the recent death of their original member Andy Fletcher, delivering a new collection of songs for the first time in format duo of Dave Gahan and Martin Gore, who have added Psychedelic Furs frontman Richard Butler as a creative partner on several songs. -
Pet Shop Boys
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New Order
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Depeche Mode
Christine and the Queens and his journey through the limits of genre.
The artist, formerly known as Héloise Letissier, has recently undergone a transition process of his gender identity, which has generated two semi-fictional and semi-autobiographical albums and his current identification as a trans man, without operations or hormone cocktails. He is now simply Chris or Redcar and the pronouns for he are the masculine pronouns. Last year's album "Redcar les adorables étoiles" was an aperitif that will be released on June 9 and is called "Paranoia, Angels, True Love", a concept album inspired by Tony Kuschner's Angels in America, and which features Madonna's stellar presence in 3 of her cuts. Héloise, Christine, Chris, or Redcar (she does not deny any of his aliases), appears on Friday at both festivals. -
Christine and the Queens
Mäneskin, a phenomenon for controversy.
The Italians Mäneskin are perhaps the most successful Eurovision winners after ABBA, and their victory at the 2021 festival propelled them to global stardom with their catchy take on 70s glam rock, provocative looks and devastating stage attitude, but, at Despite having the patronage of Iggy Pop or Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine, his latest work "Rush!", sung mostly in English, has been torn to pieces by media such as Pitchfork or Rolling Stone, despite being one of the few young rock and roll bands that can fill stadiums. The dilemma about the validity of the band will be resolved by seeing them live on the Saturday of both festivals. -
Mäneskin
Indie Comebacks:
Several myths of the 90s -00's Indie model return to the stage at PS: Le Tigre, greats of danceable electro clash who had been in a discontinuous impasse since 2007, The Moldy Peaches, who assumed cult band status thanks to the soundtrack of the film Juno from 2007 and who had not played regularly since 2011, and the more than mythical neo progs The Mars Volta, who ended a ten-year record silence in 2022 and who will release a new album in 2023 and return to the tour circuit, but be careful, they will only be on the Friday corresponding to the city of Madrid. -
Le Tigre
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The Moldy Peaches
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The Mars Volta
- For the complete program of performances and the purchase of season tickets and individual tickets, the festival's official site is:
- https://www.primaverasound.com/en