Milhoes de Festa

This Sunday I spent the day in a small town called Barcelos (Portugal) at an amazing little festival called Milhoes de Festa which ran from 23/07 – 25/07.

It was great. We arrived at around 1pm and went straight to the ‘swimming pool stage’ which had various bands and DJs performing throughout the afternoon and listened while we cooled off in the pool. It was a very hot day and I’m sorry to say that in true British style, I ended the day with slightly pink shoulders (despite applying factor 30!).

In the evening we went to the mainstage. We got there at around 7.30pm and watched We Trust – a relatively new Portuguese band – who have become famous with the track ‘Time (Better Not Stop).’ I like ‘Time’ but wasn’t that keen on their other music, which was really quite different in style from their best song. I do recommend that you check out the video to ‘Time (Better Not Stop)’ however, it’ pretty impressive.

After We Trust finished we had to wait quite a while for Electrelane to set up their equipment – which they explained afterwards was because their airline had lost some of their equipment and that they had had to borrow from the other bands.

Anyway…Electrelane were absolutely amazing. I was right in the front row, about 10 metres from the stage, and managed to take some brilliant photos. I loved every minute of their set, from their well-known stuff (‘Cut and Run’, ‘To The East’ etc.) to some of the songs I was not quite so familiar with. They didn’t communicate with the audience much, but came back for an encore to sing their wonderful Bruce Springsteen cover ‘I’m On Fire.’ Never having seen them live before, I was (for some reason) really surprised their musical talent. Seriously, these girls are bad-ass musicians, they totally own their instruments. I was also shocked at how many instruments Verity Susman played during the set. She had two pianos (that she sometimes played at the same time), her guitar, a saxaphone, and of course, sang lead vocals. Serious respect.

I’m very pleased I got my opportunity to see Electrelane play live, I hope they keep performing, and maybe they’ll even bring out some new music. Fingers crossed.

Here are some photos I took!

Electrelane performing at Milhoes de Festa

Summer so far, and exciting festival news.

Electrelane

I’m staying in Portugal for the Summer, and I’m very excited to be going to two Portuguese music festivals, Paredes de Coura and Milhoes de Festa.

Paredes de Coura only costs €75 for 4 days plus camping and has an amazing lineup! I’m most looking forward to seeing Warpaint. I absolutely love this band at the moment and I was meant to see them in Birmingham in May but I had an exam the next day at 9am..but now I get to see them in sunny Portugal, yay! Also excited about Crystal Castles (I’ve wanted to see them for a long time), Death From Above 1979, Two Door Cinema Club, Metronomy, Deerhunter and Esben and the Witch. There’s also quite a lot of bands that I haven’t heard of, or have heard of, but never got round to listening to, so it will be nice to hear some new music and maybe discover new favourite bands. The other festival is called Milhoes de Festa (literally, Millions of Party) and I’m only really going to see Electrelane headline on the last day because I’ve actually never heard of any of the other artists except the Vivian Girls, who are playing the previous day. It’s only €20 and it seems like a nice little festival (and it has a swimming pool!) so why not? I’m very happy I get to see two of my favourite bands this year, but especially Electrelane because they had stopped playing and I thought I would never get to see them play ever! And I’ll take lots of photos no doubt, and post them on here and my Flickr account.