Screaming for Bobby

While the Brit music press have hemmed and hawed and yawned at the latest Primal Scream album, I’m playing the CD round the clock with unfettered joy, writes Indrajit Hazra.

Hallelujah for Bobby Gillespie. While the Brit music press have hemmed and hawed and yawned at the latest Primal Scream album, Beautiful Future, I’m playing the CD round the clock with unfettered joy. Part of the reason for a frosty reception for the Glaswegian rock‘n’rollers from their hometown press is that Bobby and Co. aren’t really singing songs about hugging the trees, saving the whale, sticking one in into Big Corporation. Primal Scream’s doing what it does best: sticking the needle in everywhere and the ironic title of the new album is basically the opposite of what our school prefects in Coldplay are all about.

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The hoppity-hop pop-rock of the title song is as infectious as a scratch. The ‘ohhhhs’ out-ohhhh the Kaiser Chiefs, the buzz of the jingle-jangle chords out-buzz the Killers. The clackety-clack start to Can’t go back leads to a swirl of sounds with Bobby dear lolling his tongue about as if his life depends on it and he doesn’t care a fig about his life. Whether he’s talking about the state of his life or the geographic location that he can’t return to is inconsequential.

I stuck a needle in my arm/I stuck it in my baby’s heart, goes the delightful hyperventilation. Not quite, James Blunt, is it?

The lazy, boogie drift of Uptown with a caterpillar bassline is as tight as the derriere of the future Mrs Billy Joel in the Uptown girl video. The synth beginning to The Glory of Love unsettled me for a second or two. But Bobby quickly settles things down with his liquidy, uluva-vibrating and Prince-reminding vocals in this Scots-singing-the-Gospels number.

The cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Over and Over is luscious and with a bottleneck and folk rocker Linda Thompson’s vocals in the background, we’re in a Primal Whisper country. Get your body back in the drunken riffs of Necro Hex Blues. It’s like falling down the stairs forever. With terrific, tight, ass-hugging music to accompany the fall.