Watch PJ Harvey & Pulp pay tribute to Steve Albini at Primavera Sound

Primavera Sound was this weekend and the Barcelona festival renamed a stage for Steve Albini who died on May 8 and was set to play the fest this year with his band Shellac. (They played Primavera more than a dozen times since 2006.) A few artists who did play Primavera Sound this weekend also paid tribute to Albini onstage at the festival.

One was PJ Harvey who worked with Albini on her 1993 album Rid of Me which, along with Pixies’ Surfer Rosa and Nirvana’s In Utero, are probably Albini’s most famous jobs as a recording engineer. Via Stereogum, Harvey played Saturday night and told the crowd, “I would like to sing this next song in memory of Steve Albini. Steve should have been here for this festival, and it would be nice if you all think of him.” She then played “The Desperate Kingdom Of Love,” from 2004’s Uh Huh Her which celebrated its 20th anniversary the day before. Watch that at the 51 minute mark below.

On Thursday night, Jarvis Cocker took a moment during Pulp‘s set to pay tribute to Albini who we worked with on his second solo album, 2007’s Further Complications. He started in tribute to another Steve, Pulp bassist Steve Mackey who died last March. “This tour has been a strange one,” Jarvis told the crowd. “We started in the UK…and it’s the first that we’ve done without Steve Mackey our bassist. He passed away, and I’d like to dedicate this song to him. There’s another Steve that passed away recently, Steve Albini. I know that there’s a stage now named after him at the festival.” Jarvis lightened things just a little. “If you’re named Steve, don’t worry,” he said, smiling, before adding, “This is a song about life, really. When you meet a certain person, they change your life and it goes in a direction you could never ever think of.” The song that was dedicated to the Steves was “Something Changed” from 1995’s Different Class. You can watch that at the 21:24 mark below.

[embedded content]

[embedded content]