Primal Scream – XTRMNTR

Whenever indie music seems lost in its own self-righteous, unchallenging, inoffensive fundament, Primal Scream rides in to try and save it all. So just as Screamadelica tried to encapsulate the importance of ecstasy culture, or Vanishing Point tried to exorcise their own insanity, here XTRMNTR is a nasty, fierce realization of an entire world that has also lost the plot. The album starts with a gloriously vindictive sample of a kid commanding "Kill All Hippies," and this roughly states the album's modus operandi. There are songs shouting with furious, feedback-splayed anger ("Blood Money," "Exterminator"), songs of club-based revolt (both house-influenced versions of "Swastika Eyes"), and songs of utterly manic desperation ("Accelerator"). The album only lurches when lead singer Bobby Gillespie's weedy vocals can't keep up with the black noise of the music. "Insect Royalty" meanders and mumbles with a blank approach. "Pills" is a half-realized hip-hop song, with Gillespie diminishing its power on every verse (it only saves itself when it caps the song off with the album's central theme: "Sick f*ck f*ck sick f*ck f*ck sick f*ck"). Thankfully, Scream's highs, such as the gentleness of "Keep Your Dreams" (sounding like the third sibling to 1991's "I'm Coming Down" or 1997's "Star"), as well as the inversely monstrous and apocalyptic "MBV Arkestra (If They Move, Kill 'Em)," shower down with purely visceral poise. The album is not the flawless statement against complacency the band seemed to strive for, but it succeeds at tearing heads off, shooting fascists, and quickly asking questions later with unbelievable fury. For these reasons alone, it easily serves as one of the band's highest marks. These aren't the aggro-simpleton manoeuvres of bands like Rage Against the Machine or Korn; the implosive production and sheer political belief prove that ingenuity must come hand in hand with "statement" if an idea is to come across effectively. XTRMNTR is simply a protest -- sonically as well as lyrically -- and maybe this would be a fine time to once again rally behind something worthwhile.

Primal Scream - Sonic Flower Groove

Complaining about this album being an obvious photocopy of its influences is a bit like cursing the sky for being blue. Reworking past inspirations into something else has always been the raison d'être of Bobby Gillespie and company, after all. But that said, there's no question that Sonic Flower Groove is one goofy headscratcher of a release, the sound of a band that didn't quite know exactly what to do yet trying to record a big-budget (of sorts) debut album and ending up with little more than a pristine but dull photocopy of Turn! Turn! Turn! While not intrinsically horrible, it's not intrinsically much of anything else either, and certainly in light of everything the band did in the following years, it's the most wistful, fragile, and ultimately boring of their releases. The Byrds worship evident in earlier songs like "Velocity Girl" was here taken to ridiculous extremes, and if Jim Beattie wasn't trying to hide his love for chiming guitars, he wasn't trying to do anything with it either. Songs like "Gentle Tuesday" and "Imperial" (which benefits from strings and a more direct vocal) are so obviously straight from the early Roger McGuinn and company model that one might as well just pretend that's what's being heard. It's also a bit of a bemusing shock to hear Gillespie trying to politely and gently sing as opposed to his later dripping of attitude in every borrowed Jagger sneer, but such are the ways. This all said, there's a weird way Sonic Flower Groove was prescient -- if the Stone Roses loved the Byrds too, then they also loved this phase of Primal Scream just as much, while jaunty songs like "Treasure Trip" slightly forecast bits of Brit-pop almost ten years down the line. If there's a secret highlight, "Love You," with its moody ghost-of-Jesus & Mary Chain drums’ underpinning the slow chime has got to be it.