Primal Scream have spent a lot of this century on autopilot. Each album after 2000’s XTRMNTR has respectfully rehashed frontman Bobby Gillespie’s essential substances: acid-dipped grooves, quasi-political lyrics, melodies equally suited to 2 a.m. warehouse events or Rolling Stones ballads. The garnishes change—2016’s Chaosmosis had Sky Ferreira and Haim, 2013’s Extra Gentle had DJ and Steven Soderbergh collaborator David Holmes—however typically, if you happen to’ve heard one Primal Scream album previously 25 years, you’ve heard all of them. This additionally applies to the Scottish band’s 12th album, Come Forward, however a minimum of it embraces a brand new taste: Gillespie’s long-standing love of funk and soul.
The ghost of the Stax rhythm part haunts album opener “Able to Go Dwelling,” the place a gospel choir sings of being prepared for one’s time to return, punctuated by stressed strings, percussive bass, and jazzy horns that add throbbing pressure. That is the primary new Primal Scream album for the reason that passing of each Gillespie’s father and the band’s keyboardist Martin Duffy—an outdated household photograph of Gillespie’s dad graces the duvet—and his restrained vocal supply sounds shaken by current encounters with dying that don’t fairly really feel peaceable or comforting. Gillespie excels at writing openers, and “Able to Go Dwelling” establishes Come Forward as a nostalgia journey by way of the soul influences that, whereas current in Primal Scream’s DNA from the start, have by no means earlier than felt so apparent.
Holmes returns right here as producer; this reunion is extra profitable than the extra sprawling and dense Extra Gentle, as Gillespie lets him flip Primal Scream into the slick, muscular home band for a long-lost Ocean’s film. Come Forward peaks with the one-two punch of “Harmless Cash” and “Melancholy Man.” The cinematic former may soundtrack the fashionable grit of a traditional Gordon Parks movie, or a minimum of a Tarantino misremembering of Blaxploitation, whereas the downbeat latter comes from Gillespie’s 2023 rating for Émilie Deleuze’s 5 Hectares, reworked by Holmes and Primal Scream’s longtime second-in-command, guitarist Andrew Innes.
The album loses fuel within the again half, the place a number of songs appear to blur collectively into one lengthy, undifferentiated jam as repetition fatigue units in. Lyrically, the songs not explicitly about Gillespie’s father retread the identical leftist criticism of sophistication and politics we’ve been listening to since 1987—legitimate and related needs for a greater world sung by a profitable rock star who sounds virtually bored, like he’s muttering “I nonetheless should sing about this shit?” between takes. For those who’re actively searching for a brand new Primal Scream album in 2024, you’ve probably already heard and agreed with every part Gillespie has to say.
