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live

Primavera Sound Porto ’23: our top picks

After a year’s hiatus (three, actually – thank you covid) to attend the shitshow that was last year’s first weekend in Barcelona, we’re now back to regular programming. A lot has changed since last time we were at Primavera Sound Porto, including the name: there’s no naming sponsor anymore, which will probably confuse people who, for some reason unknown to us, used to call this festival by its sponsor’s name.

The festival grounds are also changing for the 10th edition: capacity has increased to 45k, there’s a new main stage (Porto stage), the old main stage is now called Vodafone (still side-by-side with the Super Bock stage, with alternating shows), and the good old ATP stage (known as Binance last year) is gone, replaced by the Plenitude stage somewhere else. There are also more bands than before (up to 5 bands per stage per day), and, exceptionally, there’s an extra festival day on Wednesday, just so Kendrick Lamar can pay us a visit.

Be sure to download our printable timetables (PDF and XLS). Make sure you keep them on your phone for easy and offline access, too. Below you can find our picks for this year – there’s a lot of guitars there, sorry about that.

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Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2022: our highlights

Ah, how we missed this scenery.
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live

Vodafone Paredes de Coura 2022: our top picks

The last time I spent two summers in a row without making the yearly pilgrimage to Paredes de Coura was 20092010. This broke uni student had spent all his yearly savings by traveling to Barcelona for Primavera, looked very deep into the lineup, and couldn’t find any reason to do it. Fast forward to 2020. “It’s been 10 years since my last trip to Barcelona, I’m coming back”. For reasons, nobody did; for the same reasons, the little town of Paredes de Coura stood unusually empty during the summers of 2020 and 2021. And even though I ended up returning to Barcelona in 2022, there was no way I’d skip Vodafone Paredes de Coura ever again like in the previous decades. Better yet, the absolute chaos we endured in Primavera Sound ’22 only made me long for peaceful Coura even more. Even if there’s a (very likely) painful airport experience ahead of me.

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live

Día de la Música 2013!

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Día de la Música – the Madrilenian urban festival which has in the past few years brought very relevant international indie acts such as Destroyer, St. Vincent, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and The xx; but also hugely acclaimed Spanish ones like Sr. Chinarro, Delorean and Hola a Todo el Mundo – will take place a month and a half from now.

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This year, the organization started by confirming one of the greatest bands of all time, and one of the most loved around here, British space-rock group Spiritualized, along with post-punk legends The FallThe Horrors and others, and again one of our favorite indie acts of current Spanish scene Hola a Todo el Mundo, plus Extraperlo (Continental Breakfast om nom nom). On past April 25th we have been awarded with quite a few more interesting names, such as the new Scout Niblett, Waxahatchee, Yeasayer-sound-alike’s Autre Ne Veut, and decent-Animal-Collective-in-2013, English trio Darkstar. Awesome.

On June 21st and 22nd, first two days of summer 8) – and what a hot summer it is in Madrid –, the mentioned above and more (and more to come yet) will play at Matadero, a nice venue near the center of the city. Passes for both days currently cost €50 and single-day tickets are available for €30.

Like we always say: being able to, go!

-RC