REVIEW: Primal Scream, XTRMNTR (Creation IMPORT)
- Wilson Neate
Kick Out the Jams MTHRFCKR! Prior to its release, Bobby Gillespie commented that on XTRMNTR, Primal Scream were "building an autobahn from Cologne to Detroit"; an ambitious project, when you consider how long the completion of the Channel Tunnel took, and a worrying one given that Gillespie's admittedly "remedial" performance in high school math and science doesn't inspire confidence in his civil engineering abilities.
But with the ghost of Kowalski at the wheel, not only do the Scream get us from A to B -- making a brilliant connection between Krautrock and the proto punk-metal KO of the MC5 and The Stooges -- but their musical road-trip stops at all points in between. And they've taken quite a circuitous route, the cranked-up techno-punk assault that figures prominently in XTRMNTR's sonic equation suggesting a visit with a certain Mr. Empire in Berlin. On arriving in the Motor City, we're taken for a spin around town -- the house/dance imperative being as high on the agenda as the guitar mayhem and driving rhythms of an earlier Detroit sound. But we're only scratching the surface here.
Angry, vitriolic and uncompromising on XTRMNTR, Gillespie cuts an unlikely but convincing figure as a post-millennial protest singer raging against militarism, neo-fascism and capitalism, as well as their insidious interrelations, to the accompaniment of some seriously funky extreme noise terror. That package is enhanced by friendly visitors including Adrian Sherwood, David Holmes, Bernard Sumner, Kevin Shields and The Chemical Brothers, whose participation bears out the old adage that many hands do indeed make a fucking beautiful racket.
"Kill all hippies," urges Linda Manz (sampled from Out of the Blue) at the start of the opening track named after that imperative, and the Scream proceed to limber up with a funky number that could be the soundtrack to a car chase on "Kojak." Although it's topped off with a Family Stone-style falsetto, this track is nicely weighted with chunky bass and bottom-heavy beats. Indeed, Mani's thick-and-throbbing bass reigns supreme, proving to be a defining aspect of XTRMNTR.
Since Manz's hero in Out of the Blue is Johnny Rotten, the opening sample itself hints at the emergence of a leaner, angrier Primal Scream. And with "Accelerator," Gillespie et al. put their cards on the table and renew their punk credentials. Mixed by My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, this MC5-esque ripper serves up driving white noise and screeching guitars; at its most intense, it's the jolting aural equivalent of mainlining pure electricity. There's a rising sense of urgency and an unnerving, escalating, high-pitched whooshing in the ears that makes you genuinely concerned that something in your immediate environment is about to explode, quite possibly part of your own body.
While the pulsating, bass-driven "Exterminator" sees Gillespie urging civil disobedience and citing the ur-protest singer Dylan with a "Subterranean Homesick Blues" reference, "Swastika Eyes" -- part New Order, part Digital Hardcore and part Donna Summer -- is politicized disco music for a Europe in crisis. Although debate on this track's alleged right wing sentiments is plain silly, its gender politics are definitely troubling. Listen for the gender of the person with those eyes. Sadly, rock again treads a well-beaten path on which oppositional politics go hand in glove with sexism. ("American Woman," anyone?) Still, despite this slip (and despite the earlier, absurd decision to put the Confederate flag on the cover of Give Out But Don't Give Up), Bobby Gillespie seems to be on the right track these days with his critiques of New Labour's betrayal of the Left and his denunciations of the highly controversial imprisonment of Satpal Ram. See: http://www.asiandubfoundation.com/satpal/
Politics aside, the next winner -- "Blood Money" -- starts like The Stooges and metamorphoses into a skewed evocation of the Bond theme with dissonant horns aplenty. Subsequently, it veers into 23 Skidoo-meet-Can in an epic contest that restores real meaning to the term "drum and bass." Forget your depthless fiddling, noodling and blipping and think "The Gospel Comes to New Guinea" crossed with Tago Mago.
A perfect mid-way counterpoint to the tone of mayhem and cacophony, "Keep Your Dreams" offers a familiar Scream comedown. After all the excitement, Gillespie delivers a downbeat piece that revisits and stumbles through the stoned territory of earlier work, such as "Shine Like Stars." from Screamadelica. "MBV Arkestra" -- a reworking of "If They Move Kill 'Em" from Vanishing Point -- is another dense, layered epic. Mixed, of course, by Shields, this track sees Sun Ra and Tim Buckley circa Lorca or Starsailor joining forces to make a good avant-jazz case for the return of rock flute. And while XTRMNTR is a scorcher throughout, it ends on a high point with "Shoot Speed/Kill Light," another protracted musical contest, this time involving Can and Joy Division.
Primal Scream launched the '90s with the sublime Screamadelica, an album that captured the musical essence and socio-cultural ambience of its time and raised the bar significantly for subsequent acts. But while Screamadelica was a blissy, edenic, "all together now" version of a Britain on "e," at the start of another decade, the almost post-apocalyptic, "fall together now," hard edge of XTRMNTR attests to an older, wiser, more politicized musical sensibility. Primal Scream have outdone themselves here -- it may only be March but there's no point in anyone's releasing anything else this year.
