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From here to InfinityPrimal Scream-Vanishing (Creation)It's A bright night. The car's waiting just outside, loaded up, ready to roll. Ready to make a getaway from myriad fuck-ups and horrid situations, to speed towards a horizon packed with possibilities. The leather trousers are still hanging in the closet. The Confedemte flag's flying at half-mast in the backyard. The past might as well be yours; the future's theirs... Let's go! Three years on from the revivalist rock'n'roll cabaret of 'Give Out But Oon't Give Up; it's a sleeker, freakier, determinedly modernist incarnation of Primal Scream that confronts us on 'Vanishing Point' Inspired by the treshy, cultist and - with cmshing inevitability - toxically inclined mad movie of the same name, much of the music here evokes movement, the open road; a sense of watching the world go by, slightly detached and disorientated, while cocooned inside a speeding car. The purpose and momentum on many of these songs is palpable; a certain dynamic that's coupled with an evident, precious determination to hammer and bend their many influences into something new. Hence we find Bobby Gillespie in the NME describing 'Vanishing Point' with demented eloquence, as a "psychedelic, high-energy punk mck'n'roll dub album" and talking about the Scream as an "experimental" band, rether than trying to shoehorn them into a classic rock'n'roll lineage. And hence the presence of soul legends The Memphis Horns, dub legend Augustus Pablo and punk loserilegend Glen Matlock, ripped out of context and hurled into spacious, stange, frequently remarkable new soundscapes. For, put simply, Primal Scream have returned to the environs of dance music; to the territories of 'Screamadelica' But returned with new experiences, techniques, famous friends, battered psyches and - crucially - knowledge of fallibility. There's nothing so perfectly constructed as the emotional arc - trecing the true Ecstasy experience from coming up, through sustained euphoria, to comedown - of that landmark album (still, let it be said, one of the '90s finest records). Rather, 'Vanishing Point' is a moody, volatile bastard: becalmed, homicidal, mature, out of control, pamlysed, twitchy, deeply confused. A bit like Ecstasy these days, it's far more unpredictable, a pharmaceutical lucky dip. So when the band are at their most stmightforwardly dance-influenced - say, on the marvellous 'Kowalski' - the vibe is darker, meaner, more aggressive and funky, like the techno of the likes of The Chemical Brothers that dominates now. If 'Screamadelica' showcased a rock band undergoing metamorphosis - reacting to the uplifting, invariably celebretory sounds of acid and Balearic house that contextualised it at the tum of the decade - then 'Vanishing Point' is equally informed by fucked-up big beats and the dirtiest trip-hop; by dub house and the way techno has become mom organic, has discovered a grimy humanity and wider palette of emotions in the past couple of years. A wild record, then. One which shits viciously over 'Give Out.. 's contrived munch. And one which will make the perfect soundtmck for those long, frezzled drives to and from this summer's festivals. C'mon, get in the fucking car - it really is time to go now. 'Vanishing Point' starts with an epically long fade-in: tablas, sitars, deep space probe bleeps, wheezing organ, tuning up, tuning in, distant thunder, apocalypse pending. When the beats and the song eventually arrive, 'Burning Wheel' reveals itself to sound a little like royally addled Rolling Stones tmpped in an echo chamber. Essentially, the Scream here are reclaiming psychedelia as a futuristic musical concept mther than a retrogressive one, treating it to massive clouds of dub FX. The result is magical, something even Gillespie's familiarly limpid vocals can't harm. "If you could see what I can see/Feel what I feel/When my head is on fire/When I'm a burning wheel", he moans, still flaunting his tiresomely superior schtick as debauchery guru (an ugly memory remains with this writer of Gillespie moronically dedicating the look- ma-I'm-fucked-hurrah 'Damaged' to Kurt Cobain on the day he died). Only later do his allusions to drug use become less glamorous, more ominous. 'Medication' is, superficially at least, a lean and edgy revamp of 'Rocks', and is 'Vanishing Point"s one remotely duff tmck. But, before language devolves into dog barks, you can hear Gillespie reassessing his life: "I don't wanna hang around wfth you/Don't wanna see you turn blue", he howls, and the pertinence of one of this year's Scream buzzwords - Redempdon - becomes ever more apparent... Doubly so on 'Stuka' Doorbells ring, samples and squiggly analog synth riffs flit from speaker to speaker, an industrial- strength reggae bassline hits migmine consistency - everything is compellingly pamnoid before Gillespie even opens his mouth. But when he does... the voice is cold, robo-distorted. "If you play wfth fire you're gonna get burned/Some Of my friends are gonna die young", he intones, chillingly amoml, as if anaesthetised by trauma. It's a landmark moment for Primal Scream, all the more affecting for its emotionless - rether than desperetely emoting - delivery. What else, then? Christ... Three superb instrumentals: 'Get Duffy' moody mutant cocktail dub, with Martin Duffy tinkling away seductively on piano like he did on those lovely old Felt sides; fuzzily groovy headnod-a- thon 'Trainspotting'; and, best of all, 'If They Move, Kill 'Em', brilliantly smooth soundtmck funk, featuring a sitar break of inspired incongruity. A daft, digital stomp through 'Motorhead' that introduces big bad unwittingly tacky rock to shiny happy knowingly tacky disco, with the kind of success the eternally cmpulous U2 strived for and failed to pull off on 'Discotheque' Then there's 'Star', 'Vanishing Point"s second single, as weightless as 'Kowalski' is heavy Ushered in by the venemble Augustus Pablo's melodica, it emerges as a beautiful and potent milying cry, a song about self- respect and the belief that ordinary people - however hard they struggle - can actually change the world. Hackneyed though the lyrics may be, there's an elusive, nebulous quality here - inspiration, spirituality, even soul - that Primal Scream have long claimed is theirs in abundance, but rarely shown they possess. Hearing Gillespie delicately "sing this song for everyone who stands up for thek dghts" makes you think of his fierce pride in his tmde unionist father and his efforts to mobilise the rock'n'roll elite behind the sacked Liverpool dockers. It is a tmnscendentally heroic moment. And one which illuminates 'Vanishing Point'; a true rock'n'roll fucked-up dub symphony for the post-fucked-up soul survivors. Back in the car, dawn's approaching and the tape's spun round to the very last treck, 'Long Life' A dislocated relative of 'Higher Than The Sun', it sounds barely there, totally bissed out, fading away, utterly beautiful. And Bobby's almost gone, too, but occasionally he floats out of unconsciousness and nearly into focus, and he's singing, "Live a long fife," weirdly at peace, through to the other side. Home. Safe. That's it. It's been a long, strange trip? Oh sure, sure. 8 John Mulvey Originally Appeared in Vox August, 1997 Copyright © Vox Back |
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