Primal Scream, review: like being assailed by a ranting student at a Socialist Workers Party disco

Maverick: Bobby Gillespie
Maverick: Bobby Gillespie - Adam Peter Johnson

“No one reads books these days / Conspiracy and illiteracy have taken their place” asserts Bobby Gillespie on Love Insurrection, the lead single from Primal Scream’s 12th album, Come Ahead. Whilst you are wrapping your head around that thought, the 63-year-old Scottish firebrand is already banging on about other important issues of the day: “Should the hungry be fed and housed and protected from the markets? / Should wealth be shared?” And where do listeners stand in the battle of “democracy versus plutocracy”?

This polemical discourse is incongruously delivered over an absolutely steaming 1970s-style funk banger, replete with racy percussion, flighty woodwind, flanged guitar, luscious strings and choral female backing vocals. It’s like being assailed by a ranting student at a Socialist Workers Party disco, and a fair indication of what might be the Scream’s most sublime and ridiculous album yet.

Come Ahead is a fantastic sounding record – soulful, psychedelic and passionate. The production by Gillespie and cinematic Northern Irish maestro David Holmes blatantly references the epic funk of the 1970’s Temptations and Curtis Mayfield. The Scream have often dipped into rock’s past to find fresh angles to their sound, and this take on Harlem transplanted to the mean streets of Gillespie’s native Glasgow pushes beyond pastiche with its contemporary energy and flair.

It has been eight years since the last Scream record, with guitarist Andrew Innes (Gillespie’s songwriting partner) the only survivor from the classic lineup. A new rhythm section of top session drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Jason Falkner and percussionist Davey Chegwidden work wonders, whilst strings by Holmes’s regular collaborator Brian Irvine weave magic throughout.

Gillespie is a fascinating character, a genuine music lover and highly opinionated maverick, who is as willing to make a fool of himself on a TV news panel as he is on stage. He has proved a very compelling band leader for someone who appears to be tone deaf, has no lung power and a chaotic sense of rhythm. Still, I’m not convinced the greatest singer in the world could do much saddled with lines about “Colonial theft / Our European mess” and “Judeo-Christian soldiers / Waiting for their orders” on the furiously pessimistic Deep Dark Waters.

I am a great believer that you sing with the voice you have, but it also matters what kind of songs you are singing. On the best of Come Ahead, Gillespie’s proselytising is deftly buried in the mix with superbly arranged backing vocalists from the House Gospel Choir. Opener Ready to Go Home is toweringly gorgeous, the Fela Kuti-like frenzy of Circle of Life is thrilling and the one chord riffing Love Ain’t Enough is a blast.

Ballads offer more of a challenge, where Gillespie’s wheezy vocals have nowhere to hide. He carries off the tender Heal Yourself with conviction, opening up about personal struggles with addiction, but the whole album is capsized by misjudged closing epic Settlers Blues, which equates Jacobite Scots defeated by English Redcoats at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 with the modern day plight of the Palestinians. The intent may be to demonstrate that we are “all pawns in a Colonial game” but droning through a nine-minute dreary dirge Gillespie comes across with all the authority of an asthmatic drunk at closing time still banging on about ancient grievances.

Best New Songs

By Poppie Platt

Chappell Roan, The Giver
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Gracie Abrams, That’s So True
Currently storming to the top of the charts around the globe after seemingly sound-tracking every TikTok and Instagram reel over the past week, Abrams’s latest track offers up more of her indie-folk musings on modern love, anchored by a killer final bridge straight out of the Taylor Swift playbook (Abrams is her protegee, after all).

LCD Soundsystem, X-ray Eyes
James Murphy and co hark back to the understated sound of their Losing My Edge days on yet another electro-fuelled banger; already announced as co-headliners for Barcelona’s Primavera Sound next year, the New Yorkers show no sign of giving up their crown as kings of indie dancefloor-fillers (sorry, The Dare).

The Amazons, Pitch Black
Taken from the Reading-raised rockers forthcoming new album, 21st Century Fiction, Pitch Black is a confident, guitar-fuelled blend of hard rock and outlaw country; think Queens of the Stone Age or Johnny Cash’s work on American IV.