Reviews

Evil Heat – Primal Scream

Label: Columbia

Most people take music very seriously. Some take music to be the ultimate and only interest. Primal Scream as individuals and as a group have always been advocates with each passing record a highly-strung taste barometer for rock and pop. Whether by the recent proclamation by Bobby Gillespie whose listening habits over the past year has included The Von Bondies as well as the cellophane wrapped and pre-packaged Sugababes, or hanging out at Shoom the Primal’s inspiration is always checked on the way into the studio.

Cultural elitism is not a new thing for the Scream, since the first album in 1987, whose imbibing of The Byrds and Love aimed for a knowing nod from those aware of the influences, the group has always sought to be seen not at the right place at the right time, more listening to the best records. There is no ironic take on music here or ever has been, the tongue has never been wedged firmly in the cheek, music for this self-styled sonic-Wild Bunch has always pertained the coolest of the cool, no matter the departing style, be it soul, big beat, house, rock or noise.

‘Evil Heat’ is in some ways a continuation of XTRMNTR. Bobby extols revolutionary rhetoric, dispensing images of political confusion as quickly as candy. Swastikas mix with cocaine; Stealth bombers launch themselves at CNN on the re-titled Bomb the Pentagon, now called Rise. All these potent images are not one distilled from a multi-media marathon, rather all taken in at once which accounts for the array of political totems and pop cultural references abound, bound and in bed together. Perhaps the overall idea is to overwhelm the brain and act as a project in itself and match the experience of media all the time and every time something of consequence happens. Tanks rolling into Palestine, while on the next channel Britney Spears, India and Pakistan lash out over Kashmir and it is still possible to forget all this by switching over to Countdown. All confusing and banal, though altogether a fashionable and edited take on the world and how we receive it.

Now this could demean the music by thinking alone, yet the Scream who have in relative terms only just settled into the role of an armchair-Baader-Meinhof, have not forgotten to get the point across that music has to be good to listen to. Like their taste in music their taste in producers and arrangers owes a debt to the serious study the group have undergone at the High Altar of Goddamn Cool. XTRMNTR was pencil sharpened into accuracy by David Holmes, The Chemical Brothers and Kevin Shields, all made their respective tracks sound like their respective avowed sounds. The sense is that no matter the original sound Bobby had come up with he had hired the right person to get the right-finished product that was the right stuff.

The same goes for ‘Evil Heat’. It is awash with objective styles and detached names. Robert Plant plays harmonica on electronic South Georgia fuelled blues ‘Lord Is My Shotgun’, ‘Autobahn 88’ is Kraftwerk in all apart from the leather trousers, ‘Detroit’ name checks the Garage-City of the moment. And bordering on the contrived Will Malone provides string arrangements for a cover of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘Some Velvet Morning’ duetted with Kate Moss, a feat almost too far in the Scream’s inclusion of the named of named and through this slightly shamed. 

‘Evil Heat’ is a combination of the Scream’s talent to incorporate a rolling circus of names and influences to achieve the sounds wanted with the ability to pitch at the impressionable lightweight political iconography that could so easily ordain a T-shirt. All with a sustained full rock-out style filtered in its insouciance from Little Richard through to Chuck D.

There is still an undeniable swagger to ‘Evil Heat’ even when down in the dirt. Finishing with ‘Space Blues #2’, a cover of Felt’s old song, as sung by keyboardist Martin Duffy, it epitomises the mind-set of ‘I’m lost and I will never find my way back home again because I’m stoned immaculate.’ Of course, as if in some cheap New York Hotel with a bowl full of coke, Kerouac next door and The Residents playing down the hall. Yet for all their arch-ness and incarceration in the prison house of Sleaze Nation Primal Scream, who could never break a smile on a Radio 1 Roadshow, continue to offer slogans as commodity to an invigorating angel-dust blown tech-rock. A Don’t Tell Lies To The Young as sung by only those in shades know how.

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Release: Primal Scream - Evil Heat
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Released: 29 July 2002