Album Review: Primal Scream - Chaosmosis
Three years ago, the Scottish rock group Primal Scream
released an album called More Light,and I apparently reviewed it for this site. I don’t recall anything from the
record, save for the fact that there was a song called “2013” on it, which, at
the time, I seem to remember saying to myself, “Well, this is going to age
poorly.”
As expected, 2013 has come and gone, but Primal Scream are
still here, and they have returned with a new album, the stupidly titled Chaosmosis.
I could really sum up the review with one pithy line that I
thought of while driving down the highway, subjecting myself to this moderately
insipid drivel—on Chaosmosis, there
is a song called “100% or Nothing.” And if it were up to me, I’d rather take
the nothing.
But I’m only 130 words into this review, and I feel like I
should explain why I didn’t much care of this record.
Primal Scream, as a band, have never really quite settled
into a sound, despite their lengthy existence. In 1994, they famously flirted with southern
rock ‘n’ roll on the album Give Out But
Don’t Give Up, and then in 2000, they injected aggressive electronics (as
well as Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine) into their sound on the seminal XTRMNTR.
Chaosmosis is a
very modern, very slick 2016 sounding record, and boasts guest spots from
modern, marginally well known popular artists like the sisters of Haim and Sky
Ferreira.
And that’s all well and good, but what does it get you in
the end?
In the case of this record, it gets you nothing. Chaosmosis is a depth-free listen; it’s
like a guilty pleasure, such as watching a mindless action movie or a romantic
comedy. If anything, it’s 38 minutes of fleeting fun—but fun that leaves you
with nothing in the end.
It’s designed as a pop record—a big stupid pop record that
comes firing right out of the gate with the faux-funk of “Trippin’ on Your
Love” and the digital slither and slink of “(Feeling Like A) Demon Again,” then
picks up again with the gigantic sounding rocking stomp of the aforementioned
“100% or Nothing.”
A number of the album’s ten songs are catchy—built around
huge, sing-a-long hooks (like the album’s single “Where The Light Gets In”) but
catchy hooks and lots of synthesizer beeps and boops only get so you so far—and
it’s the album’s real lack of depth or memorability that makes it yet another
record that is taking up space on my hard drive, never to be played again.
While the band’s 1991 opus Screamadelica may be considered highly influential and a classic
from its era, Primal Scream’s latter day output is anything but. It’s a bad
sign that I can’t remember a single thing, save for frontman Bobby Gillespie
yelling “2013!” from More Light, and
after consuming Chaosmosis, I have to
wonder what, if anything, I will retain from the experience, save for an overall feeling of dissatisfaction, and the task of translating my dissatisfaction into 500 words
or less.
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