DVD REVIEW: Primal Scream - Screamadelica

Primal Scream
Screamadelica
(Shock)
(out of 5)

You really can’t get much more English than the Screamadelica record; early 90s and the limeys were retooling the zeitgeist after that seemingly endless era of synth pop (a-ha and Erasure do not greatness make).

There was all sorts of strangeness afoot, with established musical genres shattering into myriad aspects. There was the whole nature of club culture going all anarcho-syndicist as rave culture with its talk of laws and rights. There was a pharmaceutical overload with a sort of old school Timothy Leary peace and love vibe. This resulted in things as truly dire as ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, and the more enticing like the Orb, and transformational like XL Recordings.

Back in rock land, an act that had previously brought out two fairly ordinary alternative albums had now, in 1991, released something as interesting and full of hybrid experimentation as Primal Scream's Screamadelica. A gluing of seeming opposites - a psychedelic desire enhanced by totems like ecstasy (not so bright there), meets a Rolling Stones influence in the feel of it, especially the triumphant three of Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Mainstreet.

Gospel chorus’ and horn lines with young Bobby Gillespie vocalising in a Glaswegian soul manner. Perhaps stranger still was the involvement of Andy Weatherall and the Orb's Alex Paterson - the album imbued with club style house music and trippy announcements. The band, who had never played the album in its complete form before, decided to perform it live at London's Olympia Theatre in November 2010. It’s presented here in the sparkling Blu-ray format so that all the pretty lights look nice and you can see how old these sons of bitches are looking. It’s best to start with the rock set that expresses their 'this is just like Exile On Mainstreet and I've got a habit too' approach.

They are a diverse act with a few faces - the conceptual Vanishing Point, and the cold pop of their most recent album Beautiful Future. And the best pastiche of a Stone's album ever in Give Out But Don't Give Up, where the tracks like ‘Jailbird’ and ‘Rocks’ come from. ‘Swastika’ and ‘Shoot Speed/Kill Light’ from the overlooked XTRMNTR, ‘Suicide Bomb’ from Beautiful Future and ‘Country Girl’ from the Faces sounding Riot City Blues.

It’s all played in a nice sleazy roll-up, doing proud as Scotland's greatest living rock band. The Screamadelica session is something else, maybe even reverential. Bobby G, Andrew Innes and Martin Duffy survive the test of time with Mani from the Stone Roses aiding the historical references. Bobby G seems relaxed, dressed in the style of a degenerate cop of the early seventies. They all do it, as soon as 40 looms - it’s into the tucked blue stripped shirt, small collar protruding from an Italian styled thin lapel sports jacket. It's a look that is assuring despite some of the songs’ more unusual spiritual elements, like the sacraments of ‘Loaded’ with a Peter Fonda sample from 1966's bike classic The Wild Angels, and Bobby crooning "We wanna be free to do what we wanna do" - it is a drug inspired freedom song.

The 'let freedom ring' thing is continued throughout, underlined by the gospel group who drift in and out of the mix. The defining ‘Movin' On Up’ has the gospel group and horn section in full swing, and the band have a loose and sparse style that I like, but, unlike others, I have never found them ecstatic or revelatory. I like their throwback rock feel, and can do without ideology. So, even though I've always liked Give Out But Don't Give In a lot more than this album, I starting enjoying it a whole lot more.

All the pretty lights flashing, Bobby G proselytising in the sports coat, whereas before I only liked the funky elements, now the rock bits sound better to me. The audience is a little too relaxed at times, or are their minds on getting home before the babysitter gets too drunk? It is what we euphemistically describe as ‘an adult crowd’, which makes sense considering it’s been 20 years since those halcyon days of Screamadelica.

Whatever the case, Primal Scream acolytes dig this, and the curious will be rewarded. It's all good, from Bobby G's shirt down to a degenerate version of ‘Rocks’.

By Kerry Buchanan