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On a Jagger tip!
Dane traitors? Pah! Who needs that techno stuff when you could have The Rolling Sly and the Family Stones?
PRIMAL SCREAM
Screamadelica
CREATION
BURBLE BURBLE Burble, is the
soundtrack that soaks in from all round him. Fizzing, shiny details go
tracking past, from left to right, before they turn and fly backwards
again - cutting lovely figure-of-eight shapes about his head. Tiny
lights twinkle and futuristic birds make too-wit noises and then the
entire picture starts to pulsate weirdly. A crazy, cosmic jive.
The
starman surveys all of this and sucks hard on his life-support gear. A
hundred thousand miles from home and strung-out a long way from the
capsule, the starman is beyond the stage of rational thought - he's just
thrilled that he can hang gloriously loose and take all of this in. His
last groovy communication with Ground Control reported that "Planet
earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do."
Sensation-wise, Primal
Scream have boldly headed into the zone that was so famously explored by
Bowie in his Major Tom saga - the starman junkie who took the final
spacewalk and was overcome by it all - finding his bliss, his satori, in
the bigness of his surrounding and the throbbing music of the spheres.
In 'Screamadelica', we find that Major Tom is still up there, 22 years
older but once more sending out inspired, gurgling reports.
'Screamadelica' is one of this era's most beautiful, far-reaching pieces
of musical adventure; a dreamy, occasionally spooked vision of life on
the pop frontier, sustained by club culture and brain-wacky chemicals
and many kinds of spirit-rousing music. Space travel is an obvious
metaphor to portray these consciousness-bending influences, but Primal
Scream have handled the idea coolly and exceptionally, preparing the way
for us with his summer's most gigantic single, 'Higher Than The Sun'.
The track returns as the central experience in 'Screamadelica', first in
its Orb-produced, burbling form a third of the way through the record
and then reappearing near the close like some kind of flaming comet's
tail - this time tagged as 'A Dub Symphony In Two Parts', as Jah Wobble
joins in the fun and it all zooms off into a stereo-panning,
senses-vibrating, full-glorious overdrive.
Brian Wilson, another
musician who was handy at detailing the hyper-sensuous side of life,
used to sit up through the night eating Desbutol pills, watching the
stars and thinking up "a teenage symphony to God". His presence is writ
largely over 'Screamadelica', most obviously on 'Inner Flight', which is
a might evocation of The Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds' era - all yearning
choirs and waves of reverb and peculiar combinations of instruments,
stacked to the heavens on pretty chord sequences.
That Primal Scream
(and Andy Weatherall, normally a king remixer, but now producing like a
wild man) have come so near to realising the sound of this old music is
one kind of achievement, but better still is the notion that they've got
so close to the soulful ambitions of the original, the 'feels' that
Brian Wilson used to talk about as the basis of his music. If you want
to hear Bobby Gillespie and The Scream at their lightweight, pastichey
worst, then listen back to 1987s 'Sonic Flower Groove' for a horrible
glut of self-conscious, retro moves. But 'Inner Flight' is way more
valid, more creative and child-like than any of this.
Which is
welcome news for anyone who's gotten cheesed off in the past two years
by all those crap imitators - the wee boys who've been happy just to
steal off 'Fool's Gold', 'Loaded' or whatever's been on the menu that
week. Unlike them, Bobby's always been ready to make an unguessed-at
change, to take a flier just when his last move was being assimilated by
the copy-cats. When he came out with 'Loaded', Bobby was slagged by the
likes of 808 State who reckoned he was "betraying his indie past", and
LFO who snorted that the band was actually "guitar oriented". Now the
irony comes full circle in the recent news that the ravey converts
weren't all thrilled by the Stones-like ballads that were being
introduced on to the Primals' '91 agenda.
From the latter bag you
have 'Movin' On Up' and 'Damaged', both produced by Jimmy Miller
('Jumpin' Jack Flash', 'Honky Tonk Women', 'Exile On Main St'), the two
of them loosely played out on acoustic guitars and pianos while Bobby
comes on all camp and pouty and vulnerable - like The Stones staggering
gamely out of the rubble of the '60s on 'Let It Bleed'. 'Damaged'
catches the downside of the lost-in-space experience (just as the album
cover is a smiley sun gone fried and neurotic), a lonely place where
relationships fall apart and the come-together vibe doesn't always seem
just so convincing. In contrast, 'Movin' On Up', which opens
'Screamadelica', has pace and purpose - you think of happy brethren
twatting tambourines, praising the Godhead and passing the collection
plate.
The point being that Bobby hasn't just picked up on the drugs
and dancey trip and concluded that everything is unquestionably brill.
Things are too complicated now for something as innocent and optimistic
as The Beloved's 'Happiness', and Bobby still has the suss not to settle
for the hello-fluffy-clouds zone that PM Dawn have made their own.
'Screamadelica' has the gift of perspective in that it covers a
time-span of three years and it documents the progress of the rave
pilgrims from many angles; from the excited trumpetings of 'Loaded' and
'Come Together' to the spacey crest of 'Higher Than The Sun', then
tailing off with 'Damaged' and 'I'm Comin' Down'.
The latter is a
bloodshot, six am vision of the starman finally touching base. Bobby
sounds like Jim Reid in his bombed-out-candy-chomping phase while a
saxophone blows forlornly in a 'Walk On The Wild Side' kind of a way.
'Shine Like Stars' finishes the LP, all breathy and wonderstruck as the
ocean waves break and Bobby muses on the peculiar glory of it all.
In
brief, 'Screamadelica' is the record that Bobby Gillespie always talked
like he could make. Playful and extreme, sexy and sensuous, it is wise
in the ways of rock lore and happy to snuggle close to the cutting edge
of club culture. Detractors will point to the fact that all the
post-'Loaded' singles are on here (a moot point maybe, since only five
of the tracks are brand new), but the music still sounds so exceptional,
so elevated, that you can't feel disappointed for long. 'Screamadelica'
will be recognised as a musical benchmark for these times and all the
weeboys and copycats will tremble in their pants. Ground control to
Major Bob, you've really made the grade.
Originally appeared in NME, 1991
Copyright © IPC Magazine Ltd.
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