Imagine, in the light of day, their dark looks contrasting against the sandstone tenements of the city.” When Eve Dawoud - of the style history project What We Wore - reflected on Splash One for Dazed, she said the following: “It was a varied crowd, united by an overarching punk-ness bound together by energy and ‘otherness,’ despite what they are wearing. Celebrating psychedelic pop music, punk rock, and avant-garde film, Splash One (which existed for all of about a year, from ’85 to ’86) was a place where like-minded weirdos converged to dance all night, with tapes and zines in tow.
Around the time of Sonic Flower Groove’s release, Gillespie and his contemporaries in Glasgow - including local bands and art students in Strawberry Switchblade, the Pastels, and the Soup Dragons - were reveling at a short-lived but massively influential party called A Splash One Happening. “Gentle Tuesday” (from Sonic Flower Groove, 1987)Ĭall me swoony, but I love me some early, noise-pop-heavy Primal Scream. For some, the vastly altered approach might render the song almost indistinguishable from the original plucky orchestral track, but the band’s love for the alluring tale of Phaedra remains intact.ħ. The imaginative electronic reworking of the song is what’s so unusual about it, and keeps us coming back. Nor is it solely due to the fact that My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields lent his distinctive guitar chops to the track (and produced more than half of Evil Heat). Not only is it because Gillespie (a Hazlewood superfan) duets the song with a whispering Kate Moss in their revival of Hazlewood and Sinatra. But Primal Scream’s take on the classic ’60s psych-pop song is distinctive, even in a world where an entrancing Slowdive cover also exists. Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s psychedelic classic has been covered every way imaginable, and is still being used to soundtrack surreal moments in shows like Mr. “Some Velvet Morning” (Lee Hazlewood And Nancy Sinatra Cover) (from Evil Heat, 2002) Yet the mission has always been the same: In their words, “Don’t fight it, feel it.” 10. Chaosmosis, their first effort since 2013’s More Light and their 11th album to date, sees the band continuing to play with form. Since releasing their first album in 1987, Primal Scream have gone on to score films, collaborate with the likes of Robert Plant and Kevin Shields, and rigorously toured the world to promote their diverse slew of records. He had to choose between the two acts, and ultimately went with the Scream (though he’s still friends with the Mary Chain). Tambourine Man” and the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin.”Ī natural performer, Gillespie was well-suited (and well-dressed) to front Primal Scream instead of drumming, which he’d been doing for his friends the Jesus And Mary Chain during the Psychocandy era. So they started making primitive noise music, with Gillespie helming two trashcan lids and Beattie noodling on a effects-driven guitar as they covered the likes of the Byrds’ “Mr. After being throttled by punk rock, and fed up with the grim political climate in Thatcher-era U.K., the two were desperate to get out and create. Gillespie and bandmate Jim Beattie (a school friend with whom Gillespie founded Primal Scream) both grew up in the Glasgow suburb of Mount Florida.
Even on their new album, Chaosmosis, Primal Scream collaborate with contemporary luminaries like Sky Ferreira and HAIM - their latest stint in the constant pursuit to reconsider, reshape, and revise their understanding of sound, and in turn, themselves.ĭespite their sonic swerves, Primal Scream have always been guided by the vision of charismatic, wild-haired frontman Bobby Gillespie since their inception in the early 1980s. They’ve jumped from reverb-laden guitar ( Sonic Flower Groove) to sprawling soundscapes ( Vanishing Point) to near-Stones mimicking ( Give Out But Don’t Give Up), all to varying degrees of success.
This instinct is all at once their Kryptonite and greatest asset. Throughout their 30+ years as a band, Glasgow’s Primal Scream have always operated on the preternatural need to be in flux a creature poised on the promise of evolution.