Album Review: Primal Scream - More Light

Primal Scream's heyday was 1991. Screamadelica channelled everything about the emerging electronica scene and pushed it into something so new, exciting and powerful and no one, imitators and Primal Scream alike, have been able to recreate its magic. The band had intermittent successes with the good Vanishing Point and great XTRMNTR, but have hardly been on the pulse of the zeitgeist in the past decade. Is it unfair, then, to hold More Light to deep scrutiny?

Scrutiny or not, it's hard to not get into the album's opening tune, 2013. The nine-minute rocker is held together by a groovy, jazz punk saxophone riff and wah-drenched guitar licks. The Kevin Shields' production shines though and it's easily the best song they've released in years. Things move a little more auspiciously from there, with River Of Pain and Culturcide both recalling the group's '90s/2000s attempts to reclaim their 1991 glory. Neither is a bad song really, they both just reek of past-their-prime alt.rockers churning out generic lyrics backed by forgettable melodies. In these first three songs we are given the album in a nutshell. The band still know how to write a great tune, other highlights include effortlessly funky, bass-driven Tenement Kid and relaxed loopy groover Relativity, but undercut these with forgettable, cliché lyric driven rockers like Invisible City and Goodbye Johnny.

It's difficult to not hope that Primal Scream have another brilliant album in them, but with each release it seems less likely. More Light is the group's best, probably since XTRMNTR, but it still falls short of their own high standards, set an increasingly long time ago.