Primal Scream
Vanishing Point
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Yes, Virginia, there were rock & roll-meets-club culture collisions before the electronica boomlet. Take Primal Scream's 1991 masterpiece, Screamadelica, a soulful, druggy expansion of rock's possibilities – the Odelay of its time, perhaps, but where Beck digs Bob Dylan and the Beasties, Primal Scream leadman Bobby Gillespie looked to Al Green and the Stones. Those influences dominated Primal Scream's 1994 retrojammy Give Out but Don't Give Up so much that the album suggested a Brit Black Crowes. Vanishing Point obliterates that notion, right along with logic, structure and sanity. An abstract, truly psychedelic record, it rages woozily across the cranial
Read More dance floor, pinballing between mind fucks, genre hops and drug trips even as it acknowledges tradition with an obligatory Stonesy junk nod ("Medication") and a techno-punk cover of "Motorhead." Violence and revolution dominate "Kowalski," a noisy, urban anthem that is impenetrable on first listen but ends up ultracatchy, thanks to Mani's (ex-Stone Roses) pummeling bass lines and a creepy, whispered chorus of "I'm Kowalski/In Vanishing Point" (referring to the '70s car-chase movie). There's also futuristic dub (the sinister, Tricky-esque "Stuka"), sweet space rock ("Out of the Void") and the tranquil "Star," a civil-rights tribute that sets the Memphis Horns and Augustus Pablo's melodica against Gillespie's fragile croon. The band's Trainspotting theme is here, too, still a perfectly sleepy evocation of dread vs. bliss. Dance music also shapes the Charlatans UK, an original "Madchester" band that now favors hard, tuneful gutbucket groove rock – they're the Stones to Oasis' Beatles. Tellin' Stories boasts a trio of rhythm tracks from Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands (payback for singer Tim Burgess' guest vocals on the Chemicals' "Life Is Sweet"). The opener, "With No Shoes," is all hungrily exuberant vocals over whimsical guitar crunch and turntable scratching; both that and the joyous "North Country Boy" stand in poignant contrast to the reallife circumstances of the making of Tellin' Stories: Keyboardist Rob Collins, the band's primary sonic architect, was killed in a car crash during its recording (Primal Scream's Martin Duffy finished Collins' parts). While the noirish, understated "Rob's Theme" serves as the record's coda, Collins' real epitaph is the Ray Manzarek-cum-Jimmy Smith organ grease on "Area 51," another instrumental and the record's trippiest, most clubworthy track. The Charlatans scramble up industrial hip-hop soul with spirited, melodic '60s-rock influences, but they never let their postmodernism detract from the base simplicity of well-crafted songs and unabashed rockin'. Combine that with the out-there eclecticism of Vanishing Point and you'd have the record U2's Pop wanted to be. (RS 764/765) JASON COHEN |
