A few weeks ago I travelled with my better half to Madrid for a short holiday and to attend one day of the Mad Cool music festival. The main reason for this was to see Pearl Jam who, at the end of 2017, had announced a number of European Tour Dates for 2018. Whilst there were gigs a bit closer to home, the festival tickets were quite reasonable for the day and it was a good excuse for a holiday and to visit a new city.

Prior to Pearl Jam announcing they were headlining the Thursday night at Mad Cool, I had no idea the festival even existed. After checking out the rest of the line-up and discovering that Fleet Foxes, Justice and Eels were all playing on the same day I had booked the tickets before my brain realised what I’d done. Luckily my long suffering partner agreed to come along on the promise that there would be plenty of Churros and dipping chocolate available.

We were initially warned by a number of people that Madrid in July is painfully hot and luckily, for this reason, the festival was held at night and didn’t start until around 7pm. On the day, after a morning and afternoon of exploring (in the searing heat), we headed to the venue. We were running a little bit late but figured we still had plenty of time before Eels started at around 7.30pm. Unfortunately we got off the train and were faced with a long walk into the venue followed by a massive queue to get our tickets scanned to receive our wrist bands. The huge queues were the symptom of connection problems with the ticket scanners and this meant that we queued so long that Eels had finished by the time we got in. I was disappointed but I have seen them before so didn’t let that bother me too much. In fact, had we not randomly bumped into a couple of lads from our hometown (a small town in the North East of Scotland with around 5000 inhabitants) who were already queuing, we would have been waiting an awful lot longer. Thanks fellas!  

Fleet Foxes

After about an hour we were finally in and just in time for Fleet Foxes to begin. Luckily the main stage was right next to the main bar and due to the terrible queues at the main gate, the crowd was quite sparse which meant we could just chill out sitting on the (artificial) grass, drinking beer and listening to the soothing folk rock and vocal harmonies that Fleet Foxes do so well. I’m a big fan of their debut self-titled album and Sun Giant EP so I was especially stoked to hear “White Winter Hymnal” and “Mykonos” which were absolutely glorious live. I’ve never seen Fleet Foxes before and the crowd wasn’t all that lively but I don’t know if that was a symptom of the type of music the band play, the relaxing atmosphere or the relatively sparse attendance. However, this didn’t affect my enjoyment of their set, which was just wonderful. I’ll always have that memory of standing at the bar with a giant plastic beer glass belting out (insofar as you can belt out a Fleet Foxes song) “I was following the pack, all swallowed in their coats with scarves of red tied round their throats”. Loved it.

After Fleet Foxes we had some time to kill until Pearl Jam started at around 11.30pm so we took the opportunity to explore the festival grounds. We enjoyed some of the rum and beer available at the bars, devoured some Thai cuisine (as you do in Spain), browsed the band merch stalls, pop-up record stores and craft stands and marveled at the enormous sculpture of a giant hand squeezing a tube of paint into the air. After all that excitement it was time for the main event, the reason we were here in first place.    

Pearl Jam

I’ve been a huge Pearl Jam fan since my early teens when my sister got me a copy of their debut album Ten. My first listen to this record blew my mind and sent me down the rabbit hole, devouring everything of theirs I could lay my hands on. This also led me on to other bands such as Nirvana and Alice in Chains so Pearl Jam have a big part to play in my music taste to this day. So, when we were waiting to get a drink at the bar and the band arrived on stage and immediately started playing “Release” I’m not ashamed to say that I got a little bit emotional. This was no time to be blubbering away however, and drinks in hand we made our way closer to the stage. Whilst we were off to one side we got a decent view despite the crowds and kept this vantage point throughout. When you’ve been waiting for so long to finally see a band you love I can understand how it could potentially be a disappointing experience but luckily Pearl Jam are a tight as f*ck unit and know exactly what songs to play to keep a crowd happy.

Most of the songs played were from their earlier albums including hits such as “Alive”, “Jeremy”, “Better Man” and “Do The Evolution” with a few newer songs thrown in for good measure. To be completely honest I haven’t kept up with the more recent releases so many of the newer songs were lost on me. That said, after a brief break they came back on to play “Just Breathe” which is absolutely beautiful to listen to. They also slipped in a couple of covers, one of Van Halen’s “Eruption” (which was a bit meh for me if I’m honest) and Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” which was a memorable end to a fantastic set.

So, did they play all the songs I’d hoped for? No but they played so many songs I love that the thought of what they didn’t play didn’t even cross my mind at the time. That’s the sign that a band have done their job right. Pearl Jam certainly lived up to my lofty expectations and even if you’re not a huge fan they are a band still at the top of their game and absolutely worth seeing.

Justice

By the time Pearl Jam finished, Justice had already started and as we made our way over to the stage you could hear the booming bass laden electronica reverberating around the arena. Justice are a band I got on board with after hearing their “Justice vs Simian” remix of Simian’s “We Are Your Friends” which is funky, bass driven and downright dance-able. Their debut album “Cross” is a little less radio friendly but is still an absolute classic and worth checking out. This is where my knowledge of Justice starts and ends and I was happy to hear them play some of my favourite tracks from that album. In particular they played album opener “Genesis” (which sounded even bigger and bombastic than it does on record, if that’s even possible), “D.A.N.C.E” which is about as poppy and joyful as Justice get and “Stress” which is loud, heavy and almost excruciating to listen to but somehow has a real infectious drive. I have to say “Stress” was definitely the highlight of their set and is probably my favourite Justice song. It was the end of a very long day so we didn’t stay for Justice’s full set but needless to say what we did see was brilliant.

So that’s my experience of Fleet Foxes, Pearl Jam, and Justice. Three very different bands but for me, all absolutely essential. If you’re not familiar with any of these bands then make sure you check out their debut albums which are all genuine classics.