It is 22 years since Primal Scream released a truly important album (Screamadelica) and 13 years since their last great one (XTRMNTR). The former captured the heady moment when house music entered the mainstream; the latter was the most successful example of the band’s rampant eclecticism.
On More Light, their 10th album, the Primals once again offer a précis of their favourite artists’ careers — not for nothing has their disparate approach been described as “record collection rock”. Trouble is, it comes across less like a band with a unique voice and more like a bunch of copycats offering karaoke renditions of their heroes’ classics.
The problems with More Light start with the album opener, 2013, which desperately wants to be a generational rallying cry along the lines of the Stooges’ epochal 1969. The effect is comical rather than revolutionary, not least because frontman Bobby Gillespie is a 51-year-old Glaswegian rather than a 21-year-old from Detroit.
Culturecide refers to neutron bombs and satellite dishes, although as ever with Gillespie it feels as though he’s just name-checking pop-cultural totems rather than making a serious point. More impressive is the mix of influences. You can detect elements of everyone from Roxy Music to Funkadelic.
