Primal Scream
Come Ahead
★★★★
BMG
PRIMAL SCREAM were never a band reasonably destined for “mature work”. From 1988’s Stooges/MC5black-leather ramalama, and ’91’s disco-psych Screamadelica, through to the brutal agit-electronica of 2000’s XTRMNTR, Bobby Gillespie’s team were always too single-minded in their experimental rock’n’roll crusade to reflect upon life beyond it.
Thirty years since Motown-stomping Rocks, however, the war-torn Scream are a very different proposition these days from that Glaswegian gang of old, their creative core long since reduced to just Gillespie and guitarist Andrew Innes. After 2016’s Chaosmosis chased the synth-pop zeitgeist to little commercial reward, Gillespie says he struggled to summon the motivational purpose for another long-playing transformation. It was Belfast producer/soundtrack maestro David Holmes, overseer of 2013’s More Light (their best since XTRMNTR), who cajoled him into breaking the stalemate, reversing their usual process by sending ready-made beats recorded with an LA rhythm section, for Gillespie and Innes to write words and music over.
The resultant Come Ahead has plenty of the Primals’ trademark sonic edge, thanks to a strong electronic undercurrent, but the foregrounded gospel choir and astonishing orchestration bring an overriding sense of classiness. A pervasive hand-on-hip street-funky groove, with the sweep of the strings and the voices, frequently evokes the reassuringly expensive proto-disco of Gamble & Huff ’s Philadelphia International.
There’s a sense of the Scream growing up here: opener Ready To Go Home marries a sophisticated glitterball shuffle to lyrics about facing the toughest of mid-life realities – mortality. Gillespie apparently sang them to his own father in hospital the night before his passing, yet with its ecstatic eight-strong choral intro (mirroring Screamadelica’s introductory rush on Movin’ On Up) and violin-racing celebration of release from life’s agonies, it’s a wonderfully joyful treatment of the darkest topic.
In a self-penned accompanying statement, Gillespie talks of how penning his 2021 autobiography Tenement Kid unlocked unforeseen confidence for him as a writer, first felt while creating that year’s duet outing with Savages’ Jehnny Beth, Utopian Ashes. That album’s excruciating narrative of marital decline here gets a belated happy ending, perhaps, in Heal Yourself ’s redemptive hymn of gratitude to a supportive lover, its words of unflinching self-analysis (“I wouldn’t let her in to share my darkness”) carrying a palpable confessional charge.
Elsewhere, political ideas loom large: class inequality (Innocent Money) and religious war (Deep Dark Waters) are urgently addressed, while on two longer borderline spoken-word songs, stirring yarns tell of war veteran neglect (False Flags) and English colonial evil (Settlers Blues).
If Gillespie’s newfound authority impresses, Innes, too, adds beautifully understated guitar throughout, and somehow Holmes creates sublime order amid Brian Irvine’s elite-class string arrangements, the House Gospel Choir’s testifying, and the volumising electronics. A triumph in thematic/aural juxtaposition, Come Ahead is up there with Primal Scream’s best.
Come Ahead is out now on BMG.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify| Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
TRACKLISTING:
Ready To Go Home
Love Insurrection
Heal Yourself
Innocent Money
Melancholy Man
Love Ain't Enough
Circus Of Life
False Flags
Deep Dark Waters
The Centre Cannot Hold
Settlers Blues
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