Funk! Primal Scream are now funk! And it’s strange how not at all strange this feels. Bobby Gillespie has always been one of the least self-conscious men in music, able to enter musical areas where he perhaps ‘shouldn’t’ in a way all the greats did, from Stones to Bowie.
So he’s done psychedelia, acid-house, blues, country, not caring that while the outside world might see a Glaswegian punk from an estate, he sees a freewheelin’ rock ‘n’ roll star. Which is basically all you need to actually enough to carry it off, and be one.
His band Primal Scream have always been shape-shifters in this manner, but this new shape sounds more them than they have in years.
Admittedly, that may be because they simply haven’t been around for years. It’s been eight since their last album, Chaosmosis, after the tour cycle of which, and as Covid approached, Gillespie has said he not only didn’t want to make another Primal Scream album, “I had no idea I was going to make a record again.”
Instead he wrote his autobiography, Tenement Kid, an instant classic which charted the somewhat unlikely yet absolutely inevitable rise of this skinny punk from a Glasgow estate. He also collaborated with the likes of Jenny Beth and recorded a soundtrack for Five Hectares by French filmmaker Émilie Deleuze.
Eventually, he was lured back into Primal Scream songwriting by old pal and film soundtrack guru David Holmes, with an emphasis on Gillespie writing lyrics first and songs developing from there, which is not the way they ever worked. This new album, Come Ahead, is the impressive result, coming from that more personal, black and white place, but then exploding into colour and adventure.
It was exactly what Gillespie needed to freshen things up and that is immediately apparent from the opening two tracks here. The gospel funk of Ready To Go Home is a rush of elevated feeling, as befitting a song written for, and first sung to, his father on his death bed. This is death understood in its most releasing terms, and is a revelation.
Love Insurrection, the second track, continues the funk-soul thread, a track about a divided world at war and the fascistic demonisation of the ‘Other’ in society, yet carries it off with a hopeful message about keeping together. It’s a reminder that no-one brings together dark and light as well as Primal Scream, and it’s remarkable that they’ve managed to find a new Funkadelic gear in which to express it.
While fans of the XTRMTR era might not find the guitar assault they love, all the heart and soul is still there. Heal Yourself might be the best vocal Gillespie has ever sung, it’s certainly the most vulnerable he’s sounded since probably Screamadelica’s Damaged.
There’s something here that remind the listener of Nick Cave finding a new self, or a new way to manage life, in the wake of grief. Seeing an answer in opening yourself up to the world.
With Gillespie, there’s a similar new perspective. “Heal me and set me free,” he sings, “Heal yourself, reach out now for someone else.” It’s a simple message but feels utterly vital here, the most important thing in life.
Melancholy Man has a similar feel, the soundtrack to depression and the way out of it, with some startling guitar work by Andrew Innes and that rare thing: a sax solo that doesn’t make you want to throw up.
Elsewhere, David Holmes makes his presence felt on the widescreen, string-laden Innocent Money, that mentally conjures up Seventies New York as it sweeps through the detritus of the rich to depict homelessness and a rigged system.
Love Ain’t Enough has a deliciously dirty riff and pulsing rhythm that’s like a good version of Fontaines DC. Circus Of Life is an addict’s fever dream, William S Burroughs riding a world-class bassline. The Centre Cannot Hold flips it over, showing a complacent society of spoilt narcissists.
Gillespie’s father adorns the cover artwork, a photo taken in 1960 which shows a working-class Teddy Boy bearing all the sharp uncompromising swagger of someone who would spend his life working for social justice. That kind of spirit is all over False Flags, about young poor lads sent off to war – as his dad was – an epic ode to bravery and loss.
The similarly lengthy album closer, Settlers Blues takes on colonialism, the murdering and enslavement of native people in the name of superiority or a flag or a religion or whatever they want to disguise a lust for profit with. Gillespie very much emphasises the Englishness of this, Scotland being just another country to have been stolen and settled in. You don’t get this kind of thing in Ed Sheeran songs.
Looks like Primal Scream just nicked in at the end to take the Album of the Year title. Write this every-renewable band off at your peril.
