Best new release: Primal Scream: “Come Ahead” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bobby Gillespie got me kicked out of a band once. It wasn’t his fault. It was the mid-eighties and I’d formed a group with a few of my mates. We all thought we had the best knowledge of indie music at the time and I made the mistake of asking what happened to the drummer from The Jesus and Mary Chain. The other members looked at me in sheer horror, as I obviously didn’t know that he was now the lead singer of Primal Scream. I was politely asked to look for a new band.
Gillespie was given an ultimatum by the ‘Mary Chain’ after releasing his first single with Primal Scream as he was still technically their drummer. His decision was to move forward with Primal Scream, and four decades later, you’d have to say it was probably the right choice.
So what of their twelfth studio album? To put it simply, it’s one of their best. It’s the “Scream” doing what they do best. It’s an album that could sit comfortably in pretty much any decade. There are a couple of tracks (“Innocent Money”, and “Love Insurrection”) that wouldn’t have felt out of place on the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack album.
The band clearly knew they had something special here and decided to take no chances by securing David Holmes as producer.
The opening gospel vibes of “Ready To Go Home” kick things off in grand style. This is possibly Gillespie’s most personal song to date. (He reportedly sang this to his dying father in the hospital). Other songs contain words from the manifesto written by his father, a social justice campaigner.
Some bands keep going through the motions for the sake of nostalgia. Others just seem to evolve and improve. Primal Scream are surely in the latter category. This is an album where every song hits the spot but in a different way each time.
It’s simply fucking glorious.
Stand-out tracks: “Heal Yourself”, “Love Ain't Enough”.
Best reissue: The Charlatans: “Up To Our Hips” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I don’t have a time machine, but this is the closest I can get. Stick this 30th anniversary edition on your turntable, close your eyes and you’ll feel like you’ve been immediately transported back to 1994.
It’s an album of pure beauty that proved The Charlatans were more than just popsters with baggy jeans. It’s swirling, psychedelic, funky, and bold. Like many albums released at around the same time, it had the misfortune to bump into Blur’s “Parklife”. The hype surrounding the latter album meant that “Up To Our Hips” was slightly overshadowed and not as easily remembered as being one of the great albums of its time.
“Can’t Get Out Of Bed”, “I Never Want An Easy Life If Me And He Were To Get There”, and the title track “Up To Our Hips” sound as good as ever, and each song on the album seems to flow seamlessly to the next.
The album features the original songs plus ten bonus tracks comprised of live session recordings, and rare mixes.
Get it on vinyl and play it loud.
Stand-out tracks: “Jesus Heirdo”, “Another Rider Up In Flames”.
