PRIMAL SCREAM
Beautiful Future
(B-Unique)
By Todd Lavoie
There’s a standard snappy comeback which seems to inevitably follow the announcement of a new Primal Scream release. If you spend much time in the music-nerd universe, you’ve probably heard it somewhere. Hell, maybe you’ve even uttered the words yourself. It goes something like this:
“So, which Primal Scream will we be hearing from this time?”
I suppose it’s all in good snark, given that the Glasgow, Scotland, institution has thrown itself into frequent sonic overhauls and switcheroos over the years. Starting off in the mid-’80s as Byrds-y jangle-pop devotees, they’d adopted a harder, MC5/Stooges bluster by the end of the decade. In 1991 they had morphed into flower-hugging, Ecstasy-dispensing groove-lovers with the thoroughly zeitgeist-defining indie/dance crossover Screamadelica (Sire), an album which slipped acid house, dub, and even the odd diva anthem into the British guitar-pop charts and helped convince an entire generation that rock-culture and dance-culture need not be mutually exclusive.