Primal Scream seemed like a band on the edge at their recent 9:30 Club show. Bobby Gillespie veered between lethargic indifference and incoherent banshee wails, staring into the crowd indifferently during “Kill All Hippies”, appearing unhinged during”‘Drop the Bomb”. He may have been asking himself what he was doing in DC, in front of an aging crowd of (mostly male) fans who were enthusiastic enough but not wont to jump around like they might do in Europe or Asia. Not to mention the fact that he was in a city that’s arguably at the center of the “military-industrial illusion of democracy,” at a moment in time when so much of what Primal Scream have been trying to tell the people has turned out to be correct — our leaders have been eroding our civil rights, lying to us, and generally selling out to global business; people have been tortured and thousands have been killed unjustly; the world finds itself on the brink of financial collapse.
Yet there’s no revolution, at least not in the UK or US — instead we’re clinging on dearly, hoping for the best, and practicing civil obedience. How do you feel when you’ve been shouting the truth for years but, even after you’re proven right, people don’t want to listen? Or maybe he was just a bit out of it, tired after over 20 hard years in the Scream, playing a smaller than normal venue.
That’s not to slate the show though. Gillespie was in and out at times, but the rest of the band played tightly and intensely, blazing through a set consisting of songs mostly taken from 2000’s XTRMNTR and 2008’s Beautiful Future, with some stand-outs from most of their post-Screamadelica albums mixed in (“Rocks”, “Miss Lucifer”, “Country Girl”). Green laser effects helped to create a tense and foreboding atmosphere and the band stuck to their harder and more confrontational material for the most part. Fans of their more balearic and dubby sounds (i.e.- people like me) were to be disappointed — only “Movin’ On Up” made an appearance from Screamadelica, towards the end of the set, but it was enough to show us what uplifting music Primal Scream are capable of when they choose to indulge in it.
Having said that, tracks like “Beautiful Future”, with it’s contempt for recently excessive lifestyles, ring true in today’s context, and stand up well next to older classics such as “Swastika Eyes”. Maybe a time will come when Primal Scream feel that playing their more blissful material is appropriate. For now, still, it’s the brutal threatening stuff that seems to make the most sense to them. We’re all on the edge really, but Primal Scream might already be on the other side.
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