Primal Scream
Riot City Blues

THE REVIEW

The Primal Scream: one of the most incredible bands of the last two decades.

They debuted in 1987 and have always reinvented themselves musically, almost always releasing albums different from one another, hopping from one genre to another. They started off with the acid-rock of their early days, which nodded to the sounds of the '60s ("Sonic Flower Groove", 1987), then changed course, remaining with rock rhythms mixed with danceable beats and hardcore techno (the acclaimed "Screamadelica", 1991) blending many genres into a single album (trip-hop, dance-music, dub). They fell into the abyss by making the career misstep ("Give Out But Don't Give Up", 1994), resulting in a lack of inspiration and the will to make good music. They published a music best-seller with the much-lauded "EXTERMINATOR" (or XTRMNTR).

Now in 2006, it was time to change again. The multifaceted Bob Gillespie had to shed his skin once more, like a snake, like the snake sliding down the boy's shoulder on the golden background cover of "Riot City Blues", the new chapter of the histrionic Scottish band. This time Primal Scream veer towards pure rock with light psychedelic influences and quite a few blues bursts (as the album title also suggests). The first single released is "Country Girl", a festive and rowdy rock accompanied by an equally nice video that I recommend everyone to watch.

"Nitty Gritty" with a very nice riff but perhaps heard somewhere before, "Suicide Sally & Johnny Guitar" which has another powerful riff in the chorus and is even more frenetic than the previous ones. The psychedelic vein surfaces in "Little death" where we can notice echoes of Pink Floyd in the initial part of the song "Careful with that axe, Eugene" on "Live at Pompeii"?), more than six minutes of dark, heavily inspired music that precedes an explosive finale. "The 99th Floor" is a rowdy country-blues of four minutes, the same goes for "Boogie Disease" where we seem to listen to the Rolling Stones of "Beggar's Banquet" or "Let it bleed".
Then follows the end in "Sometimes I feel so lonely" another blues piece, but blues in the true sense of the word: a sad and melancholic song with a harmonica that offers a worthy finale to this album which remains one of the best releases of 2006.

In short, "Riot City Blues" never gets boring but still represents a choice of music that isn't very original, well played but already heard. But as they say: it's always better than some of the nonsense published in music nowadays.