Primal Scream - XTRMNTR

Fri 25th Aug, 2006 in Music Reviews

My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. Ride’s Carnival of Light. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy. Oasis’ Definitely Maybe. Creation Records released some of the most important British albums of the 1980s and 1990s. But rather than grinding to a halt when britpop fizzled out, Creation’s final album release, Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR was to prove its finest moment.

Up until 2000, the jury was still out on Primal Scream. Forming the band as a side project while drumming for The Jesus and Mary Chain, vocalist Bobby Gillespie must have spent a long time wondering if he’d made the right decision.

Though 1991’s Screamadelica was a landmark release with its fusion of dance and experimental rock, the rest of the 1990s was a non-event for the band. Give Out But Don’t Give Up (1994) sold well but was savaged by the critics for its derivative no-brainer blues-rock. The acquisition of The Stone Roses bassist Mani added some backbone on 1997’s Vanishing Point but aside from Trainspotting, the title track to the 1996 film, that album went largely unnoticed.

But when My Bloody Valentine mastermind Kevin Shields joined the band for XTRMNTR, everything fell into place.

XTRMNTR forgets Give Out But Don’t Give Up and goes back to when Screamadelica left off. The album goes back to the slick drum’n’bass backbone of its 1991 counterpart but instead of completing the sound with retro pop and gospel sounds, the band builds layer after layer of effects and samples.

The guitars take a backseat, making way for Shields’ wizardry. The album has its riffy moments (Accelerator, Shoot Speed/Kill Light) but each guitar sound is just another layer out of a thousand. Just as quickly as the guitars appear, they’re swallowed up again by the storm of noise going on below (Blood Money, Keep Your Dreams).

With the amount of things happening on this record, the lyrics themselves often struggle to hold the listener’s attention. But on closer inspection, XTRMNTR is one of those records where the music and vocals complement each other to the point where they blend into each other. And just like U2’s War — where songs about violence and conflict were based around beats resembling marching and guitars sounding like machine guns — XTRMNTR’s topical lyrics drop like bombs while a sonic war rages on behind. “You think you’re free/but you ain’t free/just free to be hit”, “exterminate the underclass”, “illusions of democracy” — it’s as though this band looked into the future and wanted to destroy what they saw.

Like the guitars, Gillespie’s vocals find themselves slipping in and out of the spotlight on XTRMNTR. And it’s telling that the album’s weakest moments are the tracks that rely on the vocalist’s contribution. Pills and Insect Royalty are borderline hip-hop and, despite his swagger, Gillespie is unable to pull it off. But with so many different things going on at the one time, there is always something else there to back him up. In Insect Royalty the lead vocals blend seamlessly into the samples behind them, like landmines going off whenever while Pills comes together with three different vocal lines competing for airtime. It’s man versus machine here, with the individual powerless against what he’s up against.

It’s not surprising then, that the climaxes on XTRMNTR come during the album’s two instrumental numbers. Blood Money’s distant, muffled brass is the symbolic death of Loaded as the dirty bass and pounding drums consume the song. MBV Arkestra also rapes the brass sounds of Screamadelica but over an eastern rhythm built from countless layers of percussion and samples. After loaded (sorry) lyrics for so much of the album, the instrumental tracks are welcome breaks that ensure both style and substance remain fresh.

While most protest albums become irrelevant as soon as there’s a new President of the USA, XTRMNTR goes against the grain. Its political agenda is veiled just enough to keep its meaning  for years to come, while the fusion of so many different sounds and ideas ensures the album will have artistic relevance for even longer.