Primal Scream – Beauitful Future
This, the ninth album from Primal Scream, Beautiful Future, opens well with the title track setting the tone for good, rocky summer album. This is most definitely a summer album, invite some friends round, dust the cobwebs off the portable BBQ that’s been sat behind the shed since last year and enjoy.
On a merely personal note, I have always thought Bobby Gillespie, Primal Scream’s lead singer to be a bit of a prancing tit who can cover his own questionable musical talent by surrounding himself with good musicians. Never more-so than Glastonbury 2005 when he spent the entire set abusing the crowd before being dragged off the stage like a spoilt child. But I digress…
Bonus points are awarded for the Josh Homme / Andrew Innes collaboration on the song Necro Hex Blues. Homme works together with Scream guitarist Innes on a track that is supposedly a twin guitar tribute to Thin Lizzy. You would imagine the tribute is purely the music and not the hair as well. Although less explicitly credited, it does sound like Gillespie and co have been listening to a few old Rolling Stones albums too.
On the whole there’s nothing here that is going to make you drop your coffee, frozen and slack jawed in awe at what you are hearing from the Scream as your coffee cup smashes into a hundred pieces. It lacks the inventiveness of Screamadelica or the raw energy of XTRMNTR. Although Track 8, I Love To Hurt (You Love To Be Hurt) does provide a welcome electro interlude in an album that otherwise doesn’t stray far from what you expect a Primal Scream album to sound like.
By Mark Williams
