Craig Stephen is
back, revisiting another Primal Scream classic:
Listening to this,
some time after revisiting Primal Scream’s debut album, Sonic Flower Groove -
reviewed here - provides a deft swipe to the senses.
It doesn’t so much
sound like a band at an advanced stage of their career; it sounds like a
completely different act.
But then we should
have expected nothing less: the Primals do mutating extremely well - from
Byrdsian melodies to garage rock’n’roll to demented electronica. They’ve never
stood still and have always possessed a determination to adapt and thrive.
If there was an
inclination that Xtrmntr was a step into a new world, we were given due warning
from the cover, which was full of militaristic overtones and the title was
limited to consonants stuck in caps lock mode.
The year 2020 may
be the year of Covid-19. And it may also be a time of Brexit, anger,
out-of-control neoliberalism and environmental destruction, but it isn’t to say
that 2000 was a life of riley - the Y2K doom-laden dystopia, the peak of
Blairism, the threat of a second President Bush, and even before the end of the
first month had concluded there were ethnic riots in Egypt and two major air
crashes.
Into this world of
manageable mayhem came Primal Scream’s sixth studio album which mangled Suicide
with Can. Bobby Gillespie has since dismissed suggestions that it is political,
and yet it is hard to agree with the Glaswegian with lyrics such as: “Gun metal
skies/ Broken eyes/ Claustrophobic concrete/ English high-rise/ Exterminate the
underclass/ Exterminate the telepaths/ No civil disobedience/ No civil
disobedience/” or, these from the visibly confrontational ‘Swastika Eyes’:
“Your soul don’t burn/ You dark the sun you/ Rain down fire on everyone/ Scabs,
police, government thieves.” Hardly easy listening.
The adversarial
tone kicks off before the music even starts, with a few terse words of dialogue
heralding the opening track ‘Kill All Hippies’. The lines are cribbed from the
obscure 1980 arthouse film, Out of the Blue, in which a punk-obsessed woman
rips loose with a rant that that made her choice in lifestyle and attitude
rather transparent: “Destroy/ Kill all hippies/ Anarchy/ Disco sucks/ Subvert
normality.”
Xtrmntr’s ambition
is apparent from the superstars of indie and dance who were enticed to join the
party: Bernard Sumner, Kevin Shields, Adrian Sherwood, David Holmes and the
Chemical Brothers. Those influences would be magnified in an album that set to
achieve so much, and largely achieved it.
A standout track,
‘Accelerator’ is magnificently vicious, using an orchestra of guitars to create
a detached and dangerous three-and-a-half minutes of punk rock’n’roll. It’s a
sonic manifestation of Gillespie et al’s preferred poison of the time,
amphetamines. The fireball middle part recalls My Bloody Valentine’s ‘You Made
Me Realise’ - and who is a part of this art vandalism but Kevin Shields of MBV.
‘Swastika Eyes’ -
incredibly, the first single lifted from the album - could be perceived as a
barbed attack against Nazism and the various forms of odious right-wing,
flag-waving boneheaded politics of groups like the British National Party which
was gaining credence in parts of England at the time. But it is ostensibly a
directive against all-powerful corporations and corrupt governments, aka “A
military industrial illusion of democracy.” Powerful words, and just as
powerful was a grinding bass and a hypnotic, demonic riff that was let loose in
full, ragged glory for the final two minutes.
Slowing it down,
albeit marginally, ‘Blood Money’ is a full-throttle instrumental that has
elements of a Roy Budd gangster soundtrack fused with the theme tune to a BBC2
televisual feast on drug-running in Margate.
And on it goes,
with further adventures in sonic attacks: ‘MBV Arkestra’ adopts the Vanishing
Point funk workout of ‘If They Move Kill ‘Em’ and, as the title indicates,
Kevin Shields mutilates it into a hurricane of Indian psychedelia, Neu!, and
deranged wah-wah guitars till it resembles a thunderous, earache-inducing
volley of noise and melody.
Xtrmntr sings off
with ‘Shoot Speed/Kill Light’ whereby the lyrics are stripped to nothing more
than the title repeated ad nauseum powered by Bernard Sumner’s savage
guitar-playing. The New Order frontman wouldn’t sound this deranged till the
opening bars of ‘Crystal’ some five years later.
Primal Scream
would continue the electro-clash experimentation on 2002’s Evil Heat, which
contained a track entitled ‘Rise’, which had been heard on the tour to promote
Xtrmntr as ‘Bomb The Pentagon’. But of course, it was never going to get a
release under that title post-9/11.
No comments:
Post a Comment