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)