Primal Scream - Beautiful Future Album Review
Ninth Studio Album from Bobby Gillespie & Co. a Poppy, Rocky Affair
Sep 2, 2008
Birdies fly overhead. The sun shines. The pea soup over London evaporates. The hills are alive, etc. Sure, there’s references buried in the sparkle to the electric chair, bodies hanging from trees and a “control machine” but never mind.
Gillespie’s never been the world’s most coherent or clever lyricists. But who needs clever when there's a gritty, bombastic assault to distract?
XTRMNTR gone for good?
But this?
This is from Scotland’s sonic assailants? Is it part of a parallel universe where the nuclear buzz of XTRMNTR never existed? What about the fuzzy, trippy Vanishing Point? Have they really traded their “Swastika Eyes” and “Kowalski” for the sort of simple, faux-disco of “Uptown” (complete with finger-snapping backing singers!)?
Or the goofy cheese and (yet) more bells and handclaps on “Glory of Love”? Or the retro-funk-lite of “Zombie Man”?
Produced by Björn Yttling of Peter, Björn and John
Rant over. It’s too easy to blame the pop-tartness of Beautiful Future on the fact it is, well, poppy. But once the listener gets over the initial shock of a Primal Scream album as produced by Swedish pop-tart Björn Yttling (the butter in the Peter, Björn and John sandwich), it’s actually not so much of a diversion.
After all, the Primals’ 1991 oeuvre-blasting platter Screamadelica was a slice of poppy, acid house lunacy, complete with gospel choirs. And PS has always skirted around the edges of pop in some a sort of way. Perhaps it’s prudent to cast one’s mind back to a happier time, then.
At least track two inspires some hope. “Can’t Go Back” can be forgiven. Despite “wooo-oooh-ooohs” all over the place, the guitar grind and pop-rockness here helps keep the song wedge firmly in the brainpan. Comfort is taken in the fact that t’old Scream hasn’t been totally lost...if only for a minute. Soon, the listener has to navigate through the aforementioned 70s awkwardness of “Uptown” and 80s ick of “Glory of Love”. Moving on! Please?
Lovefoxx and QOTSA help
Thankfully, “Suicide Bomb” steers the whole thing back on track, and trudges through the mire with a sort of satisfying and dirty repetition. “Beautiful Summer” is actually quite pretty in a slacker, indie love song sort of way. Lovefoxx from Brazillian band CSS plays sexy to Gillespie’s sleazy in the chorus of the dubby, synthy “I Love To Hurt (You Love to Hurt)”, even if the lyrics confusingly repeat “the glory of love”- already the title of a different track.
Can anyone really fault Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme for anything he touches? “Necro Kex Blues” rocks in a much more recognizable Primals fashion. Sigh of relief, all around then. Only “Over&Over” falls over in the latter half of the disc, despite the presence of folk goddess Linda Thompson. Gillespie doing alt-country? The jury is still out on that one.
So what's the verdict?
Despite its occasional cornball turns, Beautiful Future isn’t so far off from a typical Primal Scream album: ie, a few clunkers and some brilliance, especially on repeated listens. After nine albums and a quarter-century on the planet, that’s not bad going. Perhaps Primal Scream has reason to be optimistic. And maybe we’ll even forgive Bobby for his handclaps.
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