@colekincart

Day one technically started around 7 a.m. when I landed in Porto. With nearly 10 hours to spare before gates opened, I wandered the city, grabbed breakfast, and put together a quick preview of the artists I was most excited to catch over the weekend (which you can read here). (Looking back now, after the festival has wrapped, it’s funny seeing which predictions held up—and which artists completely surprised me.)

By midafternoon, it was finally time to head toward Primavera Sound Porto.

Like seemingly everyone else, I boarded the 500 bus toward Parque da Cidade. Well… almost everyone else. At that point in the afternoon, I was practically the only person riding it. That quickly changed.

As the route crept closer to the festival grounds, the bus became hotter, fuller, and considerably slower. Add in a handful of road closures surrounding the festival, and eventually I decided the faster option was simply getting off a few stops early and walking the rest of the way. It wouldn’t be my last transportation experiment of the weekend.

I wandered into the grounds just as Nation of Language were taking the main stage. They ended up being one of my biggest discoveries of the weekend. They’re one of those bands I’ve listened to far more since returning home. After catching a bit of Sensible Soccers, the first real scheduling dilemma of the weekend arrived.

Big Thief or Oklou.

Festival clashes are inevitable, but this one genuinely hurt. I’ve followed Big Thief for years, so abandoning Adrianne Lenker and company never really felt like an option. I settled on what became my recurring Primavera strategy: split the difference. Two-thirds of Big Thief, one-third of Oklou.

I think I made the right decision.

Big Thief looked genuinely joyful on stage. The last time I’d seen them, in Salt Lake City last fall, the performance carried a different weight. Here they seemed relaxed, playful, almost like they were simply enjoying being together again. Maybe Europe agrees with them. Maybe they’d just found a new rhythm as a band. Either way, the chemistry was impossible to miss.

I still managed to catch the closing stretch of Oklou’s set, and somehow left both wishing I’d seen more and satisfied with how the gamble played out.

One of my favorite discoveries of the festival wasn’t even an artist.

Tucked into the grounds was Cupra Pulse, an outdoor club hidden behind scaffolding and enclosed walls. Running from midafternoon until well after midnight, it functioned as Primavera’s own miniature nightclub. The partially enclosed setup trapped both the bass and the energy inside, creating an atmosphere that felt surprisingly intimate despite thousands of people standing just outside. It was one of the cleverest pieces of festival design I encountered all weekend.

Ethel Cain followed with exactly the kind of towering, immersive performance you’d expect. I’ve lived with her music for years now, so hearing those songs echo across the festival grounds felt almost surreal.

Then came the headliner I’d spent months wondering about.

The xx.

I’ll admit I was skeptical beforehand.

I’ve seen Jamie xx multiple times over the past year and have always left convinced he’s one of the best live electronic performers working today. But I wasn’t entirely sure how The xx (a band built on restraint, silence, and intimacy) would translate to a massive festival headline slot.

They absolutely pulled it off.

Part of it is simply the songs themselves. Whether through commercials, movie soundtracks, Tumblr playlists, or just the passage of time, The xx have quietly built one of the most recognizable catalogs in indie music. Almost everyone around me seemed to know every word.

The ending was particularly special.

Rather than pretending their solo careers don’t exist, the band leaned into them. Jamie xx folded in snippets of “Wanna,” “Treat Each Other Right,” and, of course, “Loud Places.” Romy brought “Enjoy Your Life,” while Oliver Sim stepped into the crowd for “GMT.” Suddenly the show transformed into something darker, clubbier, and unmistakably shaped by the paths each member has taken over the last decade.

It worked beautifully.

In fact, it worked so well that I immediately wandered over to Cupra Pulse hoping to chase that same feeling for another hour.

I’m not sure anything quite matched it.

The night wasn’t over, though.

Curiosity led me over to Kneecap, whose late-night Vodafone Stage performance ended up drawing the biggest post-headliner crowd of the weekend. Watching them in Europe also carried a noticeably different weight than I imagine it would back home. Their political urgency and cultural significance felt much more immediate with a Portuguese audience only a short flight away from Ireland. The energy was relentless, the crowd knew every word, and it became one of those festival moments where geography genuinely changes how a performance is experienced.

I closed the night with Ninajirachi, though only for half a set.

Jet lag had officially won.

After nearly twenty hours awake, my body finally reminded me that I’d crossed an ocean that morning. Still, as I made my way back through Porto that night, exhausted and running almost entirely on espresso and adrenaline, it was hard not to think I’d picked a pretty great place to spend four days.

Three more to go.