Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2024

Perfect weather? On my festival? You gotta be kidding me. This lineup, on these green, masterfully crafted festival grounds, with a large but respectful (and mostly silent during shows) crowd, with zero rain and mild night temperatures is an automatic 10/10. And that wasn’t even the main change for the 2024 edition of the Vodafone Paredes de Coura festival: for the first time since the introduction of a second stage in 2011 – previously, the smaller stage only worked before and after the main stage shows – there were no overlaps between bands. This meant everyone could see every single show of the festival if they really wanted. It also meant there was barely a moment where there wasn’t any music playing. It also meant that every day of the festival, not including the side programme, went on for 12 hours, with some very late shows in the mix. Obviously, there were still choices to be made: do I miss an entire show to go home and pick up the earplugs I left there? Should I eat anything at all tonight, or regret it tomorrow? Do we get any sleep at all tonight?

“We have Khruangbin at home”. During the first day of the festival, the Texan trio was the most namedropped band from those not on the lineup. The reason? It’s impossible to not think of them when you hear Glass Beams on stage. Anodyne instrumental psychedelic, groovy rock from a masked Australian trio who draw inspiration not from the American heartland or 60s Thai funk, but from a fusion of Indian and western rock music. The influences might be distinct, but the end product is basically the same: I’m sure the band wouldn’t hold it against anyone if they mixed them up with a Khruangbin tribute band.

It didn’t help that another world-instrumental band played before them, too. Sababa 5 sound definitely less derivative (and less gimmicky) than Glass Beams, though. Their weaving of Anatolian grooves, funky keyboards, and a smorgasbord of Jewish music influences (from mid-century Mizrahi music to the klezmer-ish closing track) would feel more at home at the festival’s main stage.

It was an anticlimactic first day, in the end. bar italia‘s unfortunate cancellation for health reasons led to a much deserved – as predicted on our preview – promotion of loud fuzzy starlets 800 Gondomar to the main programme of the festival. And they delivered, shaking up things a bit in a somewhat lukewarm evening where André 3000‘s New Blue Sun performance ended up being the fiasco many were anticipating. Not that it’s the artist’s fault – we kind of enjoyed the cosmic-ish improv show – but a large headliner completely failing to capture the attention of 90% of the audience is something I haven’t seen before. It would have been really funny if Wolf Eyes, another band we’ve seen earlier this year playing an improv show with a couple of flutes, got a main stage spot at prime time at a large indie festival.

Bizarre scenes: walking around the second stage to the bar next to the backstage gates, it seemed like not a single soul was not having a conversation. New Blue Sun managed to get introverts talking to each other, maybe in disbelief to what they were seeing. That’s punk enough for me, I guess. Despite its minimal church-like staging, Killer Mike‘s set later on felt more like a proper headline show, his soulful, gospel-y rap tunes backed up by a powerful quintet of singers.

Elsewhere, George Clanton was losing members of the audience every time he and his drummer would play a song. The truth is the cringy stage banter, where Clanton gave shout outs to sponsors Vodafone, Yorn and Super Bock every thirty seconds or so, ended up being more fun than the music itself. At this point, just give me a rock show, please.

It came very late at night, but it did. Model/Actriz are one of the hottest bands on the planet right now, and all their acclaim is totally deserved. Cole Haden is the raucous frontman you want to be when, every time you’re bored watching a show, you daydream about being on stage. Even though he’s not on stage for half of the time, zigzagging his way through the public, captivating you and your friends while the rest of the band tears your eardrums apart with screeching noise rock. In a way, although the music they play is half a world apart, they are Les Savy Fav’s kindred spirits; just like them last year, Model/Actriz were maybe the most interesting band of the whole festival, and the undisputed winners of the first day. What a band – can’t wait for their second album.

The Yorn stage was stacked on the second day of the festival. But first, a word about the main stage performances we managed to see: Brazilian outfit Gilsons surprisingly brought out the first huge crowd of the weekend, followed by a lukewarm Sleater-Kinney show – their first in the country – that pushed huge parts of the audience away for a late dinner (seriously, it was impossible to eat). The Vodafone stage proved too big for the legendary American indie rock band, who would probably benefit from a smaller, but more attentive audience at the Yorn stage. The masses simply weren’t into it. What they were really into was discount Daft Punk, L’Impératrice.

Say what you want about their derivativeness, but the Parisian group knows very well what they’re doing and they’ve amassed quite a few bangers under their belt, from the recent “Love from the Other Side” (dedicated to everyone in the audience who’s lost someone) to the hits “Agitations tropicales” or fan-favorite “Anomalie bleue” off Tako Tsubo, the album they presented in the very same stage in 2022, a concert that made us guess – correctly – that they were bound to return every year (they’ve since played Super Bock Super Rock last year before returning to Coura). They don’t try to shake off the Daft Punk influence either, dusting off “Aerodynamic” off Discovery. You know what? I’m actually fine with them coming back every year. They were made for the big stage, and the big stage kind of only makes sense for bands like them. Hats off.

Later on, Portuguese rapper Slow J drew another huge crowd, which kind of explained why nobody cared about Sleater-Kinney earlier. I’m usually not one to criticise seemingly way-too-leftfield choices from promoters. For example, I thought J Balvin headlining Primavera right after Shellac in 2019 was the punkiest thing that festival has ever done. I thought Sam the Kid’s headline show in 2022 was one of the best moments I’ve witnessed at Paredes de Coura. Maybe it was the abnormally high temperature, but this time I couldn’t help but feel I was being transported to the MEO Sudoeste festival, a festival that in 2024 is more dedicated to being some kind of spring breaker for teenagers excited for Hardwell or David Guetta than at the Portuguese festival for music lovers. At least the lines were empty for a second dinner.

At the smaller Yorn stage, things were thankfully different. Protomartyr are simply unable to play a bad show. As soon as you spot frontman Joe Casey pulling out beer cans from his blazer’s pockets, you know you’re in for a ride. Tension builds up slowly with a few tracks from their latest album (“For Tomorrow”, “Elimination Dances”) until things start shaking up with early career banger “Scum, Rise!”. “A Private Understanding”, maybe their highest profile track at the time of release, segues into “Half Sister”, its slow, crunchy crescendo warming up the crowd. These are, respectively, opener and closer off 2017’s Relatives in Descent, the album that definitely put the Detroit post-punk band under the spotlight. They’re also the perfect displays of the Pareto-like tension and release mechanics of Protomartyr: 80% tension (those drums!), 20% release. At this point, we’re clearly inside best-of territory: the pit opens up for “The Devil in His Youth”, there’s a small detour to 2020’s Ultimate Success Today‘s standout track “Processed by the Boys”, and, of course, the sing-along classics off The Agent Intellect: “Pontiac 87”, and cathartic set closer “Why Does It Shake?”, a perfect song that every rock band would have killed to write it first. Can you imagine having this song and, sometimes, not play it at all? Unreal stuff.

During the first part of the fourth Wednesday show I’ve seen in slightly over a year I was thinking they’re getting less and less interesting with time, but a great cover of Drive-By Truckers’ “Women Without Whiskey” turned things around, and their heavier tunes (“Quarry”, “Got Shocked”, and the fantastic “Fate Is…”) slowly revealed Wednesday at their best, driving the crowd to do that bizarre rowing thing on the pit. Kids these days, man. Earlier on, Deeper played a competent show that, however, paled in comparison with a late night show we’ve seen at Amsterdam’s Paradiso earlier this year. Either that, or that 7 pm time slot is cursed. I wish I shared the crowd’s enthusiasm for Sprints, on the other hand. I’m extremely grateful to Ireland and the UK for the recent boom in exciting rock bands, but maybe we don’t need all of them: derivative to the nth degree.

When it comes to going out for entertainment, I’m a proud cedista – I like to have fun early in the day, and call it a night at night, not in the early hours of the morning. On Friday, however, this logic had to be trashed – the big, big highlights of the third day of the festival were about to happen shortly after 3 AM (no, really). Nigerien guitar extraordinaire Mdou Moctar surprised us a few months ago with a new record that was more abrasive than we had come to expect. Their live show, however, treaded the line masterfully between new punchy tracks like self-titled track Funeral for Justice, and the groovy affair Afrique Victime from their 2021 album of the same name, an anthemic desert rock masterpiece used here as their set closer.

It was 4:35 AM when Rotterdam hopefuls Tramhaus started their show. What the hell. Are their hometown’s döner spots even open by then? The only good thing about seeing them in a time slot that is usually taken up by DJs is that there’s plenty of space to be comfortably up front… Wait a minute, are these kids really opening the pit… Where do they get the energy from… I mean, can you really blame them? On the eve of the release of their first full-length, the Dutch post-punk band is a well-oiled machine that breaks havoc on any stage, at any time. Doesn’t matter if they’re playing released tracks from their debut EP (played in its entirety here), their 2023 7″ series (like the excellent late set riot-inducing “Beep Beep”), or from the upcoming The First Exit. Zero dead moments. It’s close to 5:30 AM when we’re starting to be herded out of the festival grounds, and it felt like the whole show went by in 20min. It’s only uphill now for Tramhaus.

Earlier on, girl in red tried to spice things up on the main stage with some fire tricks, but what people really wanted that night was to, of course, open up gigantic mosh pits at every single IDLES song. Every time I see the Bristol rock band I can’t help but feel I’m watching an over-the-top theatre play where the rock star protagonist is supposed to be a positive role model for young men that might otherwise be tempted to follow every single idiotic grifter on social network “X” (*cough* An**ew T**e *cough*).

And it works: kids might come for the big riffs and huge sing alongs (especially on their excellent pro-immigration song, “Danny Nedelko”, which is probably the song of the festival in every festival they play), but they stay for the positive social justice messages that, unfortunately, sound as fake as you might imagine when they compose half of your appeal as a band. You’re in a country that got rid of its monarchy over a hundred years ago, maybe save the “fuck the king” fuckery for your UK shows, lest we all think you’re not really being serious about any of it. There’s also the darkly hilarious juxtaposition of singing about “putting homophobes in coffins” (a great idea) and then spending half of your stage banter simping for a territory with an extremely patriarchal society, led by Islamic fundamentalists with absolutely zero regard for queer people whatsoever. In a hundred years, future historians will love stuff like this.

The last day started on a slow note with two certified Bolachas moments: Hurray for the Riff Raff played their latest album, The Past Is Still Alive almost in its entirety. Unfortunately, they did so to an half-empty hill at the main stage. It’s hard to admit it, but our favorite folk/Americana artists almost always fail to pull a sizeable crowd at the early hours of the festival; the stage looked too large for such contemplative, mid-tempo music, too. Right after, Palehound played what was probably the shorter set of the festival. Solo on the smaller Yorn stage, El Kempner did some sort of best-of from their catalogue, as heard on the live album they have put out the day before their Coura show. Alone on stage, Palehound doesn’t play a Dinosaur Jr. Jr. set; Kempner does their own thing, refraining from the usual yawny contemplative strumming stuff most solo artists resort to when they end up on stage without a backing band. Kempner’s guitar playing is a marvel to see, and the songs aren’t half bad either. Read: they’re the best freaking songs you’re gonna hear until very later that day. “Independence Day” has the best riff of a 2023 “songwriter album”, whatever that means; a solo “Dry Food” leaves you gasping for air like it’s 2020, and so on and so on.

Let’s pretend there’s a photo from the Superchunk show before this paragraph. If complaining about festivals was an Olympic sport, this would be me trying to qualify for the next edition. How do you manage to book one of the most iconic acts in indie rock history, an institution whose core members founded the iconic Merge Records – who gave us so many of the bands that delighted generations of festival goers in the past 35 years – playing for the first time in a peripheral market like Portugal, only to slap them on the small stage between two of the bands drawing the biggest crowds?

The result: it’s 1 AM on the last night of the festival, and Superchunk are playing for a half empty second stage, having their set cut short because the Jesus and Mary Chain went on for longer than they should have. The good thing? They don’t care, they’re happy to be here, they have hits to play, they have Foolish to celebrate. Their standout album is turning 30 later this year, and that’s what half of their set was about, starting off with two very deep cuts: “Why Do You Have to Put a Date on Everything” and “Saving My Ticket”. They would later, of course, revisit “Driveway to Driveway”, the standout from that album, and one song off most of their studio albums.

They might not tour much, and although their rhythm section is brand new, following the departure of drummer Jon Wurster and original bassist Laura Ballance (who still writes and records, but does not tour anymore due to health reasons), you really wouldn’t notice until someone pointed that out. Early highlights included Majesty Shredding‘s “Learned to Surf” (big, big chorus) and On the Mouth‘s “Package Thief” (indie rock 101); towards the end, we would notice that the set was cut so short that they had to leave out songs like “What a Time to Be Alive” (one of their best 2010s-era tracks that was on their printed setlist), “Precision Auto” (kids, including myself, would go insane over this one) or “Throwing Things” (your favorite indie rock musician’s favorite song). But hey, at least the loyal bunch of 30 and 40-somethings that didn’t feel the need to save a spot for Fontaines D.C. got “Slack Motherfucker” for a last moment of elderly pogo.

Let’s finish this by focusing on the main stage for a bit. Slowdive are, by now, regulars at Paredes de Coura. The princes of the shoegaze crown probably like the festival as much as the festival likes them, and after enchanting in 2015 and 2018 (with two stops at Primavera Sound in 2014 and 2022), they returned to play, yet again, one of the solidest shows of this year’s edition of the festival. Unlike the snoozefest presented by the Jesus and Mary Chain later on, they actually had something new and decent to present us: everything is alive, an album that lives up to the legacy of their 90s material. New tracks like “chained to a cloud” or “kisses” do not pale in comparison to the classics (like the very celebrated “Crazy for You”, “Alison”, or “When the Sun Hits”). They might not have sounded as crisp as in that 2014 show at Primavera (the best sounding band I’ve ever seen in a festival stage), but their wall of sound is still as sweet as ever, engulfing us in a metaphorical Faraday cage that prevents us from reaching for our phones or whatever (I’m lying, I snapped a few videos so I don’t forget which songs they played so I can namedrop them here, but you get the idea).

But the headliner show of the festival came last. Out of the very, very long list of guitar bands coming from the British Isles in the past few years, Fontaines D.C. are on the brink of being the biggest of them all. Could they finally be the band that, at least momentarily, finally shuts up all the discourse about rock music being “dead”, the absence of bands capable of filling up arenas when the Stones, Springsteen or Metallica retire? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but four albums into their career, the Dublin band has it all: mid-tempo, radio friendly, head-bobbing songs (“Starbuster”, “I Love You”, “Favourite”), sing-along hits (“A Hero’s Death”, “Big”, “Jackie Down the Line”), quality riffs (“Televised Mind”, “Here’s the Thing”). And, of course, a great frontman and songwriter in Grian Chatten and a monster tune called “Boys in the Better Land”, with its opening bass line capable of convincing the most pit-averse individual that sure, why not. In the end, we are left with the bittersweet idea that this was the last chance we got to see them before they are thrown to arenas and the main stage of huge, impersonal festivals surrounded by concrete and gigantic ads. But we had a good run, didn’t we?

Vodafone Paredes de Coura is back next year between 13 and 16 of August 2025. Plan ahead and travel early – it’s a mistake to not spend some extra time in the village before the festival.