While I might consider myself something of a  Festival veteran these days, arriving halfway through the weekend is something I’d never done before. Unfortunately, work commitments meant that this year we don’t arrive on site until early Saturday afternoon, a move which has both pros, and cons.

While turning up looking and feeling fresher than the hardcore contingent that have been camped since Wednesday has its pluses, it also means that this year we miss the likes of Liam Gallagher and Muse, whose respective sets were mentioned over the weekend with nothing but reverence.

Entering the arena for the first time this year, it’s instantly obvious that the atmosphere on the Main Stage for indie-poppers Two Door Cinema Club has been boosted tenfold by the weather, and the band’s bright and breezy indie anthems are lapped up by a baying audience. We make our way over to the BBC Introducing stage for Leeds locals The Golden Age Of TV, whose upbeat art-pop is yet another perfect accompaniment to the weather. Having come a long way in a short space of time, the band’s latest single ‘Television’ only feels like the tip of the iceberg, and you can expect much more from them soon.

Unsurprisingly, Bastille’s return to the Main Stage following their 2015 appearance is met with a rapturous response from a distinctly younger audience and as the sun starts to dip and the band belt out the likes of ‘The Things We Lost in The Fire’ and ‘Pompeii’, flairs are lit and more than a few people seem physically moved.

Elsewhere, Cigarettes After Sex offer an atmospheric and more laid back alternative on The Festival Republic Stage, though one can’t help but feel their overtly chilled ambient indie would be better suited to an earlier slot than the one they find themselves in. That said, the band make for an interesting discovery, and one we recommend checking out.

Back on the Main Stage, Kasabian hit the stage to a riotous response, opening with ‘Ill Ray (The King)’ there’s bucket hats aplenty and more than a few flairs considering their banned nature at the festival, it all adds to the atmosphere however.

Concurrently, You Me At Six followed up last year’s not-so-secret set with a blistering statement of a headline on the NME/Radio One Stage. 15 tracks filled that span the entirety of the band’s career, it’s performances like this that inspire the massive devotion their fans shower on them. Tracks such as ‘Loverboy’ and ‘Stay With Me’ are met with huge singalongs, while ‘Save It for the Bedroom’ is almost deafening in its crowd participation. And as huge jets of flame erupt from the stage, it’s abundantly clear that You Me At Six have come a long way from their be-fringed pop-punk beginnings and are fully deserving are the arena-filling realms they now inhabit. True modern day rock stars.

Back at the Main Stage, Kasabian close with an impassioned outing of ‘Fire’, and while the crowd loses its collective shit, it becomes increasingly clear that they’re a band I just won’t ever seem to ‘get’ and though they’re one of the biggest names in British music in recent years, I can’t help but ask myself, why?

A while ago this site contained a few city guides for a handful of places in the UK & what they had to offer for the live music fan. They weren't regularly updated so we dropped them. This piece is though intended, in part, to fulfil the same function for Porto, where the younger & smaller Primavera Sound (NOS being the main local sponsor) event takes place a week or so after the original in Barcelona.

Having popped my cherry at the Barcelona event in 2016 & being possessed of a wish to visit Porto for two or three years it seemed obvious upon the release of the earlybird tickets for 2017 that one be bought as the event must have the same line-up in each city, right? Wrong - the Porto event has only four stages & consequently gets mainly the middle tier acts so no underexposed newbies or headliners such as Arcade Fire. Still, 85€ for the event was fine with me.

The city itself offers a very cheap and enjoyable holiday experience. Given that Ryanair only fly there from Edinburgh on Tuesdays & Saturdays I naturally had to plump for a week of sunshine with temperatures around the 30 degrees centigrade mark, rather than mist the final day of the festival. There's more than enough to keep you occupied aside from the festival, whether it be the art collection of Serralves, visiting as many churches as possible, doing one or more of the tourist tours or just crawling the bars drinking either the very cheap Super Bock or sampling the local wares of the city's newer brewers, seeing as it's experiencing a growth of those the same as most other places. There's also the wine. And the coffee. And the 1€ cakes and sandwiches although full meals cost far less than at home too.

Travel is cheap too - an hour on the train south to picturesque Aveiro set me back 4€ each way and the Metro around the city & out to the park where the festival takes place is in the main under 2€ for a single journey. There's an Oyster-like system in place so once you have your smartcard from the machine at the airport you merely need to top it up with the right fare(s) and step on and off buses & Metros as your needs dictate.

As mentioned NOS Primavera Sound takes place in a park, which gives it the edge over the Barcelona event in terms of comfort. At no time are you walking across a dusty, concrete desert and the hillsides allow for clear views of the stages from a prone position. As the overall site is though smaller there are far fewer art, clothing etc. stalls (my poster tube was a redundant piece of luggage this year) but, particularly if you're female, you can get a good fix of second-hand clothes shopping done in the city and the quality of prints, badges, cards & other artwork for sale (particularly around Rua de Miguel Bombarda and at the Circus Network space) is very high.  

So who was actually any good at the festival? Swans were a revelation to be honest. Not a band I've ever given much time to and I opted to chat to a site contributor over seeing them at Le Guess Who? a couple of years ago but this weekend their two hour set held me for the duration. I'm pleased to say I've finally seen Arab Strap although they maybe want to give themselves a rest from 'The First Big Weekend Of The Summer' and Teenage Fanclub were a solid presence on the Friday evening. 

Shellac were better than in Barcelona last year, possibly down to the Palco stage being head height rather than half that again. Mitski was good fun, Hamilton Leithauser was emotive, Against Me! were rock and roll, The Make-Up were infectious although having Ian Sevonious stand all over you was probably not what many in the centre of the crowd had bargained on, Wand were a great blast of energy & infectious guitar work (what King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard failed to be) and the tail end of the Evols set gave a hint that I'd missed something epic by being a tad late that day. Metronomy, who I see in a new light following Joe Mount's recent dismissal of The Flaming Lips, Japandroids and Pond were also great crowd pleasers.

Elsewhere Aphex Twin was a slow burner which I left for more immediate pleasures, Cymbals Eat Guitars seemed either oddly placed in the bill or are virtually unknown in Portugal, Cigarettes After Sex were nothing special (& what's with that REO Speedwagon cover?), Sleaford Mods were as bombastic as expected but if you've seen five minutes of them you've seen the whole show (which kind of goes for Death Grips too), Songhoy Blues got a good reaction from the crowd and Royal Trux were as ramshackle as when I last saw them 20 or so years ago. Sure they walked off about 20 minutes earlier than they should have but fair play - for all the drivel spouted between songs they didn't forget any of their lyrics, much as that constantly seemed a possibility. The Growlers failed to live up to expectations, sounding oddly one dimensional compared to on record.

Homegrown acts Samuel Uria, Rodrigo Leao & Scott Matthew and Miguel unfortunately made little impression on me. On the whole though I'd say the event for me came out ahead of its bigger brother, not least for the better quality food on offer but transport away from the site (the closest Metro ceases at 22:00) was better organised & information about it more readily available.

NOS Primavera Sound is for a weekend, not for life though & the city's live music scene continues after it's all over. To that end I headed along to the Cave 45 venue on Monday night to see Cleveland's Archie & The Bunkers, ably supported by energetic & entertaining local garage punks The Magnets. Two rather unorthodox acts - the latter field a bass/drum/organ & singer formation whilst the youthful headlining duo share vocal duties and play just a drumkit and an organ, albeit with gobs of energy & passion. The venue itself has good sound and two decent bars so provided a fine location to see out the end of this Portuguese live music experience.

Cheers to Eduardo & Francisco for excellent Couchsurfing, Ana for driving and Chris for the banter.

Further event photographs here.