Primal Scream have always been difficult to pin down – which is saying something with the array of genres that music journalism feels the need to create.
Primal Scream are a band who can swagger through Stones‑inspired rock one minute, then vanish into a haze of rave beats and dub basslines the next. With new album, Come Ahead, they don’t really settle on one identity so much as mash them all together and dare you to keep up. It’s chaotic, it’s messy in places, and yet it’s exactly the kind of album that they can get away with.
Bobby Gillespie is still very much the conductor of this particular carnival. His vocals are more of a presence than a technical instrument; part sneer, part sermon, part late‑night ramble that somehow turns into poetry. He’s not trying to sound polished, and that roughness fits the record perfectly. There’s a looseness to his delivery that gives the album its edge.
Musically, Come Ahead is a patchwork quilt of everything Primal Scream have ever flirted with. There are slabs of guitar rock, some strutting funk, a haze of electronics, and more than a few nods to gospel and soul. The band lean into their strengths, which means it can feel like a grab bag at times, but one that’s stitched together with enough conviction to hold.
The production keeps everything dense and slightly grimy, which works in its favour. There’s a grit across the record that ties together the stylistic shifts. Even when the band dabble in electronic textures, the beats still feel raw rather than glossy. It’s less about clean precision and more about atmosphere, about conjuring that sense of being three drinks in and half‑convinced the night is going to end in either transcendence or trouble.
Lyrically, it is as you’d expect: politically charged in places, casually destructive in others, but never bland. Gillespie has never been shy about letting his worldview spill into the music, and here he sounds both weary and riled up. Some lines bite, others ramble, but all of them feel like they come from someone who has lived enough to earn the right to rant.
If there’s a weakness, it’s the pacing. At just over an hour, the album could probably afford to shed a track or two. Some of the slower cuts drag, not because they’re bad, but because the highs are so immediate and energised that the quieter moments pale by comparison. The sequencing doesn’t always help either, with a couple of heavy hitters buried deeper than they deserve.
Primal Scream aren’t chasing relevance here, and that’s what makes the album work. It doesn’t sound like a band desperately trying to recapture past glories or impress a new generation. It sounds like Primal Scream being Primal Scream — messy, loud, contradictory, but alive. It leans on some old material – Gillespie’s father, leftist politics and the like which can stop it from really breaking the mould, but there’s nothing that drags the album into ‘not being worth it territory’.
Author: Tom, Cardiff Store
