Primal Scream - Beautiful Future

Aug 5, 2008

Hopes were truly high for Beautiful Future. The last time Primal Scream retreated into retro safety mode with the much maligned but actually great fun Give Out But Don't Give Up, they responded with arguably the two most impressive albums of their genre hopping career in Vanishing Point and the quite wonderful XTRMNTR. So when Bobby Gillespie promised an altogether edgier, more experimental affair than the laughably uninspired Riot City Blues, it seemed only fair to give him the benefit of the doubt.

This however, is a much different Primal Scream to that of the 1994 model. For a start, they have, save for the perpetually adolescent Mani, grown up. Properly grown up, into almost fully functioning members of a civilised society, replete with North London town houses, babies and everything. The hard drugs and heavy nights of yore have been replaced with letters to the council complaining about the noise from nearby pubs.

But then, Primal Scream have always been about an endearingly affected anger; their politics often seemingly based on a fag packet Marxist manifesto. It's not even always been about the tunes. What truly characterises Screamadelica, Vanishing Point and XTRMNTR as classics is the sound. In short, Rolling Stones Primal Scream = bad, MC5, krautrock and acid house Primal Scream = good. And here, unfortunately, is where Beautiful Future at times goes horribly, horribly wrong. While the cover of Fleetwood Mac's 'Over & Over' is extremely pretty, sounding as it does like 'Star' from Vanishing Point, too many other moments of potential are lost in a haze of nondescript production. We are supposed to be unnerved by 'I Love to Hurt (You Love To Be Hurt)', yet the end result is Death in Vegas-lite, in which Gillespie's bizarre mockney accent in the chorus is about as threatening as Jamie Oliver covering Abba. Actually, far, far less frightening than that prospect. 'The Glory of Love' comprises a bizarre fusion of handclaps, an oriental pastiche approximately 35% less authentic than 'Kung Fu Fighting' and a pulsing analogue bassline. Suffice to say, it's a mess. When Beautiful Future isn't smothered by the production, it's let down by Gillespie's bizarre vocal inflections (aside from the aforementioned mockney, the otherwise impressively ominous 'Beautiful Summer' suffers from a horrendous faux American vocal) and unintentionally hilarious lyrics. In fact, the LP's first lines serve as a warning for what is to follow: " Take a ride around the city, tell me what they see, empty houses, burning cars, naked bodies hanging from the trees." Bobby Gillespie lives in Islington.

So, Beautiful Future has major flaws sonically, vocally and lyrically. And I haven't even mentioned the truly inexcusable 'Zombie Man'. And yet, somehow, there's just something likeable about this album. There are enough moments, from the pure pop of 'Can't Go Back' to the Josh Homme assisted scuzz of 'Necro Hex Blues' to rescue it from the brink of disaster. Do not expect a Primal Scream classic, because it's far from it. But at it's worst it's comedy gold, and at it's best, well it doesn't sound anything like The Rolling Stones.

Oliver W J Rock

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