Bilbao BBK 2013

The first thing that catches your eye upon entering Bilbao is the remarkable San Mames project; Athletic Club Bilbao’s decrepit stadium is being torn down with half of the vastly more modern new ground under construction adjacent. Like some dazzling alien spacecraft being sucked through from another dimension, it turns out to be a fitting introduction to Bilbao BBK Live, a festival of many quirks.

A free shuttle bus is on hand to transfer festival goers from San Mames to Kobetamendi, the mountain park where both the campsite and arena are situated. If you time this bus journey right, BBK is as pleasant as the occasional waft of Basque sea breeze. We’ll get to the if part shortly.

Rocks, clay and gnarled roots cook up a recipe for sciatica on the ground-surface across the whole site; it takes some real thirty-five degree heat-rage to summon enough blunt force to drive tent pegs in without a mallet, trust me. Manual labour complete, we head back into town for a selection of pintxos (Basque bar snacks) and icy white rioja using the tried and tested ‘point and say uno or dos, grin, repeat’ method. You can combine these two delicacies for three euros in most tabernas and considering the wealth of options – from fresh squid, langoustine and lobster to Iberico ham, potato omelette and Manchego cheese – you’re left neither hungry nor out of pocket pre-bands.

Naively underestimating the logistics of holding a festival on a mountaintop with only one entry and exit point, we strike the day-ticketholders heading up Kobeta for the first time, leaving us at the very back of a queue which snakes around the station, almost connecting back and front. Two hours in the baking heat this time, and subsequent hefty lines for toilets, salty fries, water refills, and lobotomies. Okay not the last one but don’t be surprised if someone makes a mint doing them next year such is the eagerness to stand still and wait for stuff.

No matter though, first night headliners Depeche Mode provide a more than adequate tonic for our swollen feet and sunburnt lips. Bedecked in matching leathery waistcoats, the Basildon trio inspire some of the most uproarious sing-alongs of the festival, not least ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ which the Spaniards exercise rather literally, recanting the chorus over all three days. Biffy Clyro pack the smaller Heineken Stage from front to back with the Scots confidently declaring this their ‘favourite night of the summer’, ripping through ‘Mountains’, ‘Bubbles’ and newbie ‘A Girl And His Cat’ with equal ferocity. Later still, at almost 2am, a sizeable but markedly more tepid crowd offer Two Door Cinema Club’s stringy indie-pop what little energy they have left before straining up the hill towards camp.

Saturday brings heavy rain. And not that lovely cooling rain that lasts for ten torrid minutes and clears the humid atmosphere to rapturous applause. We mean torrential, soak you to your marrow precipitation complete with forked lightning and thunderclaps that sound like two Transformers butting heads over the Main Stage. The Vaccines do well to battle through ‘Teenage Icon’ and appropriately, ‘Wetsuit’, before the health and safety officers quite rightly usher the band offstage.

Klaxons fare better once the storm subsides, providing an enjoyable entrée for those who had sheltered by the bars slugging on fifteen euro ‘cubalitros’: a litre cup of half alcohol, half mixer. Although their debut LP has aged about as gracefully as Peter Stringfellow, ‘Golden Skans’ and ‘Atlantis To Interzone’ still pack a potent ravey punch through rain, booze, queues and all. Kings of Leon are the embodiment of the term ‘banker booking’, solid if unspectacular and uber crowd-pleasing with shit new stuff (‘Use Somebody’, ‘Sex On Fire’) bumping into down n’ dirty older material like ‘Molly’s Chambers’, ‘Four Kicks’ and ‘The Bucket’. Cheesy gigantochoruses, earworms and handclaps aplenty, but do we lap it up? Of course we bloody well do.

Every single shred of clothing and camping equipment is predictably drenched throughout the following day but we fight the heat and sleep deprivation with bread and cheap cava – a bottle costs less here than a bag of crisps does in London – before welcoming The Hives and Vampire Weekend to the Main Stage. The latter lean assuredly on their recent third album with ‘Ya Hey’ and ‘Diane Young’ stacking up nicely alongside favourites ‘Oxford Comma’ and closer ‘Walcott’, while The Hives unsurprisingly have the crowd in raptures with ‘Because I Wanna’s intro riff.

Cheers Bilbao, that was wet, warm and really rather wonderful.