Before Spiritualized came on, I wound up meeting a Swedish woman who seemed very drunk, and very excited to see Spiritualized. She explained they’d been one of her favorites since she saw them at a festival — she didn’t know who they were back then, but her friends persuaded her with the promise that “there would be cute boys crying there.” She considered last night her first time seeing Spiritualized, since she really only watched the cute boys cry last time. Anyway, the whole time this conversation was occurring there was this eerie, ambient sound playing from the stage. “You love music, you must understand sound, right?” she asked me. “Uh, sure, I guess?” I replied. And then she told me that somebody like Jason Pierce understands enough about noise and sound to know that this particular sort of queasy high-pitched sound would repel people who weren’t fans from walking over to Spiritualized. “Ugh, let’s get away from that sound” instead of “Hey, they sound cool, we should check them out.” It does kind of seem like something Spaceman would do.

Spiritualized were good as always, too. They’re one of my favorite bands, but they’re just not a good fit for a festival setting. It’s the one set at Primavera so far where I heard only British accents and no Spanish.