I heard people started lining up for Cameron Winter’s solo set at seven in the morning. I heard Skrillex took over a whole stage and Four Tet was there. I heard the kebabs are nigh-inedible. I heard they’re shutting down the whole festival because of severe weather. No, wait, I heard it’s back on. I heard you and your band have brought turntables and guitars. I heard all the warning signs of early onset tinnitus. Mostly, though, I heard a lot of very good music this weekend, and I’m here to tell you about some of it.
The Bomb Squad
While I missed their official festival performance—and Cameron Winter’s rain-slicked “Glycerine” moment—I was able to catch Geese’s pop-up show at the Paral•lel 62 theater on Wednesday night. The last time I’d seen the New York wunderkinds live had been the day after Getting Killed dropped, so it was surreal to hear a sold-out crowd sing along to nearly every word of these songs—including the guitar riffs, a holdover, I suspect, from football chant culture. Even more surprising: the tracks off 2023’s 3D Country consistently got the biggest reactions from the crowd, including a rollicking “Cowboy Nudes” and a rendition of the title track that had Winter & co. grooving like Booker T. and the M.G’s. Save some leaden audience banter (Y Tu Mamá También is Mexican, Cammy, not Spanish), it was an electrifying start to a weekend that would soon threaten literal electrification.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
In a devastating turn of events, the first night of Primavera got rained out, with a warning of lightning storms that, mercifully, never manifested. A couple friends and I were planning to make the most of the night and hit the club until we heard that Father John Misty was on at the Cupra stage, at which point we promptly turned around and hightailed it back to the festival grounds. My windbreaker of questionable waterproofing was, by this point, soaked through, so I was well-positioned to receive his gospel of “Mahashmashana,” a song about transcending our corporeal existence.
Waiting with bated breath to see if Massive Attack would go on, we heard two separate clusters of Brits belting “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse. Word gradually made it around that their set had been cancelled, but our consolation prize came in the form of the only valid male pop star, 2hollis. I’m convinced searing bangers like “Flash” and “You” burned through whatever bacterial infection had been brewing in my sleep-deprived, highly compromised immune system, because I woke up the next morning feeling right as, well, rain.
The People’s Princess
You can tell Addison Rae loves being famous because she’ll do nearly anything to stay that way: fling herself off elevated pedestals; dance in red-bottom stilettos; even crowd-surf. Rae’s Saturday night Revolut set was a burlesque of pop stardom—fitting, since she first got famous for doing a sort-of burlesque of fame itself. Rae made her entrance on a moving platform that instantly brought to mind Kylie Minogue at the 2002 BRIT Awards and, later on, mashed up her debut single, “I Got It Bad” with “…Baby One More Time.” Every detail—the bedazzled bleeding heart on her boustier, the Fosse “Airotica” choreo—was creative-directed within an inch of its life, like an especially flamboyant child putting on a concert with his Polly Pockets. (Not that I’d know anything about that.) But it was Addison’s beaming presence that sold the fantasy. “The girl I wanna be is still the girl inside of me,” she squealed at the climax of “Money Is Everything.” And you know what? I believe her.
