Classic Album Review: Primal Scream - Evil Heat (2002)

Craig Stephen enjoys a close encounter with the Devil’s music … 

Through their multitude of stylistic changes, Primal Scream have always retained a bit of a punkish, anti-establishment streak. 

This could be partly explained by the band’s mainstay, Bobby Gillespie, coming from good socialist stock: a great-grandfather was one of the founding members of the Independent Labour Party in Glasgow, and his father, also Bob, was a union leader and a Labour Party candidate in Glasgow (losing to the Scottish National Party when he was effectively a shoe-in). 

So the young Gillespie would’ve grown up surrounded by such lofty ideals. 

Consequently, the Primals have never quite fitted in with the record industry, such as their adoption of electronica about 1990, a hitherto verboten idea in the world of indie music. 

They upset the poor wee things of Rangers FC (1872-2012) by branding them “the most fucked up scum/ That was shat into creation” on a Scotland football single collaboration with rabble rouser Irvine Welsh and On-U Sound. Cue an orchestration of contrived outrage from the dark side of football. 

As the band matured they perversely became more difficult to label, a band that the record industry never quite came to terms with. 

Therefore, the band’s seventh album, Evil Heat, is a bizarre, bewildering and yet mesmerising album that veers between extremes. 

As examined in a previous review, the predecessor album XTRMNTR was a veritable axe thrown at the world. This extraordinary collection mangled Suicide with Can and contained Molotov cocktails in the likes of ‘Swastika Eyes’ (“Exterminate the underclass/ Exterminate the telepaths/ No civil disobedience”). 

A year after that album’s release, Primal Scream toured with a song called ‘Bomb the Pentagon’. A problem arose when someone did exactly that during the 9/11 attacks. Rather unsurprisingly, no song with that title has ever appeared on record.

Gillespie’s excuse that that was because it wasn’t a particularly good song falls flat through the appearance of ‘Rise’ on Evil Heat. This is a reworking of ‘Bomb the Pentagon’ with a new chorus and a few other lyrical tweaks, but the music was largely unchanged. 

It was a rallying call to the dispossessed and the desperate: rise up you bastards FFS, Gillespie was screaming at the masses. 

“Hey wage slave where's your profit share?/ They got ya down, they're gonna keep you there ... Get on up, protest riot/ Are you collateral damage or a legitimate target?” 

There are external talents at play throughout Evil Heat. My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields produces six tracks, half the album therefore; Two Lone Swordsmen (aka old hand Andy Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood) produce a further four tracks, and one more is cooked by the ubiquitous producer Jagz Kooner. And on the other side of the window helping out were a veritable array of British stars, such as Jim Reid, Robert Plant on harmonica, and Shields himself on guitar effects. 

One contribution that came as something of a surprise is supermodel Kate Moss playing Nancy Sinatra to Gillespie’s Lee Hazlewood on the duet of ‘Some Velvet Morning’. Moss hadn’t shown previous form in a recording studio, but perhaps that was the objective. 

This is a remarkably different version from the Sinatra/Hazlewood original: big crunchy beats shower Gillespie’s initial, lush vocals. Moss does a decent job of her portion of the lyrics, and gives a beauty to what is a down’n’dirty electroclash take on a song that Hazlewood says was inspired by Greek mythology. 

‘Skull X’ sees the band delve into its punk roots, and there’s an element of the Sex Pistols in the robustness, but they actually sound more like The Stranglers. Lyrically, it reeks once more of Gillespie’s sharp, dark mind: “The sky's black with locusts/ My eyes are burning stars/ There's a mountain of gold teeth/ in every bank vault in this world.” 

The Weatherall/ Tenniswood-produced ‘Autobahn ’66’ is reminiscent of Kraftwerk. It appears to be an instrumental, until we first hear Gillespie at 2.29, with what is mere background vocals limited to an oft-repeated verse of “Dreaming/ Dreaming/Seeing/Seeing/Dreaming” for a minute and a half till the singer develops the theme with an expansive chorus. 

Album opener ‘Deep Hit of Morning Sun’ is a rabbit punch to the senses: backwards guitars, a mystical vibe, barely any drums, and a ghostly chorus. It’s unlike virtually anything the band have done, and I would like to imagine it as being left off XTRMNTR, but that’s probably not the case. 

‘Miss Lucifer’, meanwhile, is reminiscent of The Prodigy with its punk-techno feel; ‘Detroit’ is hard and heavy electronica; and ‘A Scanner Darkly’ is an instrumental similar to anything off the second side of Bowie’s Low. 

Evil Heat is something of a seminal album which is underpinned by pulsating electronica. It has no balance, no theme, and it often bemuses. And that is why I like it. I had previously regarded Evil Heat as a weak follow to XTRMNTR but having played it several times over the past few days I’m discovering an awful lot more than I did on the irregular listens over the past 20 years. It has a cult feeling; not everyone is going to like it, but those who do shower it with glowing terms.

Classic Album Review: Primal Scream - Primal Scream (1989)

Fresh from his last Primal Scream album review receiving more actual page hits (5,700+) than any of my own 2020 blogposts (bah humbug), Craig Stephen returns with a look at the self-titled follow-up to that debut release, offering a thoughtful and measured take ...  

Occasionally, a single track subsumes an entire album.

Primal Scream’s second album isn’t by any stretch of the imagination their finest 35 minutes, as they made the move away from the twee 60s pop of their debut, Sonic Flower Groove.

But it certainly contains some outstanding moments, chief among them the track which closes out the first side, ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’. It’s feted as being the progenitor of the band’s lauded ‘Loaded’ single, whereby producer Andrew Weatherall faithfully followed the band’s instructions to “just fucking destroy it”. And so he did, mangling it almost beyond recognition. All that was retained were elements of the lush orchestration and sinister beauty of the original.   

If its infamy lies in that phoenixisation, ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’ is a strong and masterful work in its own right, initially starting in a similar way to a pair of ballads included on the same side, before developing into a full-blown bitter love song, as the protagonist attempts to find redemption for his cheating.

“I betrayed you/ You trusted me and I betrayed you/ If I obeyed you/ I can't be me so I betrayed you/ I don't want nobody else/ I just want you to myself/ But I betrayed you/ I'm sorry I hurt you.”

At the end of it, Bobby Gillespie’s tale of self-pity is so heartfelt you can’t help but want him to succeed.

But otherwise, Primal Scream is a full-blown rock’n roll animal. It was the first time the group would shake off one style and adopt another on such a wholesale basis, but it wouldn’t be the last. The sole single to be released from it, ‘Ivy Ivy Ivy’ comes from the deep recesses of the early 1970s while not entirely shaking off the jangle tendencies of that aforementioned debut album. “My eggshell head is your to break I feel like dirt” sings Gillespie in another plea to be loved and forgiven.

‘Gimme Gimme Teenage Head’ is clearly a nod to The Stooges both in the title and how it uses and abuses the American proto punk pioneers’ modus operandi, with ‘Kill the King’ and ‘Lone Star Girl’ carrying on the 1972 blues’n’roll snot rock.

The reviews weren’t overly enthusiastic. The NME called it "confused and lacking in cohesion", imagining Gillespie "standing in the middle of the recording studio so dazzled by the pressures of what he's achieved so far (and not achieved) so far that he can't even find the exit door let alone the key to making A Good Record."

Rarely has a band ditched a style beloved by its fanbase by alienating much of that core support, and so Primal Scream was dismissed by the anorak-adoring bohemians that set them on the road in the first place. It didn’t exactly win them new fans but it was another step to where they would ultimately lift themselves up to during their magnificent and highly creative 1990s. 

(This blogpost is dedicated to the memory of long-time Primal Scream collaborator and superb vocalist Denise Johnson who died suddenly on 27 July 2020)

Classic Album Review: Primal Scream - Sonic Flower Groove (1987)

Craig Stephen revisits a fledgling Primal Scream …

***

It came as something as a surprise to Primal Scream fans - of which I am one, though my dedication has been tested over the past decade - that the second Scream compilation, Maximum Rock N Roll, contained anything pre-‘Loaded’. That seminal single - THE sound of 1990 - came a good five years after their first. But the previous effort of collecting the band’s singles, Dirty Hits, conspicuously omitted the twee-heavy seminal early efforts or anything from the debut album Sonic Flower Groove.

Maximum … partially redeemed that Stalinist rewrite of history by including ‘Velocity Girl’ (actually a B-side), and both ‘Gentle Tuesday’ and ‘Imperial’ from Sonic Flower Groove as well as ‘Ivy Ivy Ivy’ from the greasy, long-haired rock’n’roll churner of the eponymous second album of 1989. That album famously contained the semi-ballad ‘I'm Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’ which was picked up by DJ Andy Weatherall, bastardised beyond belief into ‘Loaded’, and hey ho, off we go, to superstardom and industrial levels of drugs. 

I’ve never truly understood the reluctance to accept all of their history, as flawed as it is at times, but I guess that if an album failed to light the bonfire, they might well brush it off as an aberration. Though, if that was the case, the Scream would be within their rights to dismiss the past three studio albums. 

So, what of the flowers and garlands debut? An album that owed a huge debt to Love, The Byrds, and Tim Buckley, and was an essential part of the singles-focused twee/shambling scene of the mid to late 1980s. 

Regardless of its status within the band, it is a timeless masterpiece that I find easy to play over and over, and discover new chimes or riffs to enjoy each time. 

And there are riffs aplenty. On ‘Gentle Tuesday’, a monumental statue of string-driven beauty, as Gillespie utters his final verse, Jim Beattie strikes up an almighty 45-second or so Love-in of jangly-guitars-to-fade that left panties wet all over the planet. And so it goes: shades of garage rock get snippets of time amongst the indie pop frenzy with largely fey lyrics, sung by a pre-drugs (well, real ones anyway) Bobby Gillespie, ending in a gargantuan barrage of riffs, such as on ‘Treasure Trip’.  ‘Imperial’ shows a bit more ambition although it does contain a clear nod to The Byrds with Gillespie and co-writer Beattie attempting to be Wordsworth: “Being blind or build a shrine/ To vanquish takes away without return/ With chains you're bound/ The best died last the looking glass/ Exterminating and you might well find/ It's just a matter of time.” 

Even the ballads are beautiful, and this writer has never ever written a word of praise for a slow-mover. 

Contemporary reviewers seem intent on comparing the debut to what came after, which is a monumental mistake; it must be taken on its own accord. And yes, there is resemblance, to put it mildly, to The Byrds but if you think appropriating from elsewhere is a rarity then wake up and get to that coffee machine. Then listen to every record you have and ponder where each idea has come from. 

With the decline of the shambling scene and the realisation that they needed to move in a different direction, Primal Scream would soon encompass full-tilt garage before taking another 180 degree turn and landing at Screamadelica. Three albums, none of which sounded like the other, and so it would continue with each new record until 2002’s Evil Heat. The lesson learnt from Sonic Flower Groove was never to stand still and try to repeat what has already been done. 

Ironically, the impetus for this review was on entering an op shop and hearing the bars to ‘Silent Spring’ which closes the first side, of the vinyl version obviously. The young-at-heart ladies at the counter, none of whom struck me as proponents of Scottish twee pop, seemed to be enjoying Sonic Flower Groove, and happy to play something they would have soon put on the CD shelf, mingling with albums that, perhaps, are more akin to the bargain basement museums of second-handville. 

Random 30 2013: Primal Scream - 2013 (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

When I reviewed the latest Primal Scream album earlier in the year, I made note of the fact that More Light was essentially a hybrid collection of just about every musical style the band had ever thrown at us. My copy of the album came with a number of bonus tracks, and it seemed very fitting that among those bonus cuts was a remix by long-time collaborator Andrew Weatherall. ‘2013’ was one of the better tracks on the album in its original form, but it was even better after it got the Weatherall treatment.