A couple of weeks ago, while at the official presentation of Optimus Primavera Sound 2014\u2019s full lineup at the Porto city hall, I was surprised to see a lot of people cheering uncontrollably whenever a band they liked appeared on the big screen. Seriously, when \u201cThe National\u201d appeared printed on the jacket of one of the characters on the (great) short video that announced the festival\u2019s lineup, I thought FC Porto had scored or something. Shouts of similar magnitude could be heard when Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Kendrick Lamar or Haim were announced, but a lot of names went unnoticed and are naturally confined to the last few lines of the lineup poster.<\/p>\n
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Courtney Barnett<\/strong> is one of those names. Sure, the Australian 90s-slacker-indie-rock-inspired (read: Pavement and Built to Spill) singer-songwriter hasn\u2019t even released a proper album besides A Sea of Split Peas<\/em>, a compilation combining her two first EPs released last year, but there\u2019s enough juice on it (\u201cAvant Gardener\u201d, \u201cHistory Eraser\u201d, \u201cDavid\u201d, \u201cLance Jr.\u201d\u2026) to make sure we\u2019re in for a treat next June.<\/p>\n Following the demise of the shoegazy Sian Alice Group, who back in the day toured with artists as big and musically as far apart as Spiritualized and Florence and the Machine, Sian Ahern may have stopped for a while but couldn\u2019t stay away for long.\u00a0Eaux<\/strong> is her new band and, like Courtney Barnett, a full album is still to be released, but their debut EP, i<\/em>, is enough to make us pumped for their shows in both Porto and Barcelona. Track picks: \u201cNew Peaks\u201d, \u201cToo Dark to Tell\u201d.<\/p>\n Speedy Ortiz<\/strong> has caught my eye last year with the spectacular Major Arcana<\/em>, top 20 material in my albums of 2013 list that I didn\u2019t bother to publish here, but who cares. Indie rock like it used to be, you know, in the good ol\u2019 days. Something to make up for the lack of Superchunk in the Portuguese edition of the festival. \u00a0\u201cNo Below\u201d is easily one of my favorite songs of this decade. It could be yours, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple of weeks ago, while at the official presentation of Optimus Primavera Sound 2014\u2019s full lineup at the Porto city hall, I was surprised to see a lot of people cheering uncontrollably whenever a band they liked appeared on the big screen. Seriously, when \u201cThe National\u201d appeared printed on the jacket of one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[207,1857,1856,1014],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live","tag-courtney-barnett","tag-eaux","tag-optimus-primavera-sound","tag-speedy-ortiz"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t