Primal Scream - Beautiful Future
B-Unique/Warner
By Andrew P Street
Primal Scream get... happy? The hell?
Primal Scream angry, that I get. Drugged out and swaggering, sure. Nodding off in a corner, OK. But when the jaunty two chord jive of the title track bursts out of the speakers, complete with chimes that would seem over the top on a Slade Christmas single, that's not the ‘Scream I remember. Musically it's not a million miles away from Pulp in their ‘Common People' heyday, but with only splashes of the dark, oceanic wit that one would expect from Jarvis Cocker - or, for that matter, the ‘Scream's iconic frontman Bobby Gillespie. By the second track it's all clear: while the Gillespie tongue has clearly been placed archly in that (sunken) cheek, there is still an unmistakable whiff of wonder at late-in-life fatherhood combined with reformed junkie apologia. The frantic guitars of ‘Can't Go Back' are wedded to a lyric about putting a needle in his arm - and his baby's heart.
However, despite the sentiment of ‘Can't Go Back', Beautiful Future has a lot of looks over the band's shoulder: ‘Uptown's overwhelming bass nods back to the band circa Vanishing Point, the shit slide-guitar boogie ‘Zombie Man' resurrects the US rock that the band had thankfully left behind post-Rocks, and ‘Suicide Bomb' could be Bob's former employers The Jesus & Mary Chain.
However, in terms of looking back, the biggest surprise is the actual sound of the disc. Gillespie's not the first musician to retreat to the music he loved in his youth, but who knew it was Johnny Hates Jazz and Thompson Twins? The album's full of those oh-so-80s DX7 synth lines, clamouring over the top of songs like ‘The Glory Of Love', which is the 80s-est title imaginable, although it's explicitly denied in ‘I Love To Hurt (You Love To Be Hurt)', a duet with CSS's Lovefoxx that declares there actually ain't no glory in love. Make your goddam mind up, Bob.
Overall, though, it's a solid disc for all its flaws. It's hard for the ‘Scream to do a dud record (although they gave it a red hot go on 2006's Riot City Blues) and this is another step along a unique musical trajectory.