What album are you listening to?

Largo's Shark wrote:

I'm going to give it a listen, though admittedly I was put off by this review:

http://musicfeeds.com.au/album/primal-scream-more-light/

Well, with Primal Scream you have to take the rough with the smooth. Bobby Gillespie's self-parodic lyrics and hectoring vocals are present and correct on More Light. As Alex Petredis put in it a review for The Guardian of the band's last album, 2008's Beautiful Future:

More baffling is the decision to foreground the vocals and lyrics of Bobby Gillespie. Never the highlight of any Primal Scream album, here they're inescapable: he is, as a rapper would say, all up in your grill. There's the usual torrent of drug-related cliches - "I stuck a needle in my baby's heart, she looked so hot and sexy," offers Gillespie, who is 46 years old - but the real problems come when he abandons the platitudes about junkies and veins and offers us something of himself, chiefly his famous political acumen. He has a tendency to address listeners as the lobotomised drones of the capitalist system. That sort of thing got a bit wearying coming from Crass, who were at least committed anarchists, squatting in an open house commune and apparently unable to play live without attracting unwanted police attention. Coming from Primal Scream, who are none of those things, but have been heard advertising everything from cars to clothes to Carphone Warehouse, it sounds, at best, pathetic. "Take a drive around the city, tell me what do you see? Empty houses, burning cars, naked bodies hanging from a tree," opens the title track, thus begging the question: where have you seen this, exactly? In Islington, where you live? No wonder property prices in N1 have levelled off.

At worst, however, it's genuinely insulting. "Congratulations, you live in a dream, in the dead heart of the control machine," sneers Gillespie, a man recently spotted confronting the grimy day-to-day reality of life on society's margins by attending the Mayfair launch of a $250,000 diamond and sapphire-encrusted ice dagger designed by Jade Jagger for use in the world's most exclusive bars, including Crystal, the London nightclub run by Prince William's Eton pal Jacobi Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. He was probably there plotting the downfall of the dead-hearted control machine with his fellow guests, including noted revolutionary Marxists Alexa Chung and Davina Taylor. These are hardened insurrectionists, who, like Gillespie, know that there can be no social justice until the gutters run red with bourgeois blood. "We've got a noose if you want to hang around," he jeers, "maybe some torture to tousle your hair." http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/18/popandrock.primalscream

More Light certainly has plenty of buttock-clenchingly embarrassing lines in that vein, BUT (and it's a big "but", which is why I've emboldened it) the music more than makes up for it. Now, in spite of my avatar, I'm no huge defender of Primal Scream - I love Screamadelica (and its sleeve), but that's about it. For the most part I think their music is derivative and unintentionally hilarious dross (especially their music of recent years and even with The Stone Roses' Mani on bass). On the other hand, they occasionally come up with something really terrific.

More Light is their KILL BILL VOLs 1 and 2 - imagine Screamadelica and XTRMNTR chucked into a film soundtrack blender overseen by David Holmes and Tarantino. It's unwieldy, self-indulgent (and, yes, too derivative in places) and doesn't always work, but there are also some real gems here, with the likes of "Rivers of Pain" and "Goodbye Johnny" showcasing some thrillingly new sonic directions for the Scream, while "Sideman" boasts some of the best use of traditional Japanese instruments on a rock record since The Cure's "Kyoto Song". "It's Alright, It's OK" is the NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN to "Movin' On Up"'s THUNDERBALL, but, remember, NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN is actually better than THUNDERBALL. And there are honestly some very good, well-constructed songs and catchy tunes on this album.

More Light is not flawless. It probably isn't even a great album. However, Primal Scream sound fresh and enthused again for the first time in many years. They seem to be exploring new avenues again instead of just treading water with tired old rock n' roll dirge. This isn't business-as-usual Primal Scream. It's the Primal Scream that occasionally flickers into life every few years. Which is exciting.

Anyway, do give it a listen and let us know what you think of it.

Thanks for the defence. Will the check the deluxe edition out on Grooveshark later on. 22 tracks is a lot.

I've been re-visiting Brett Anderson's solo albums lately, and I've come to the conclusion that SLOW ATTACK is the best (BLACK RAINBOWS suffers from the same U2/stadium rock blandness as BLOODSPORTS). Love Leo Abrams's sparse arrangements (echoing Tim Friese-Greene), and the whole thing is like Talk Talk's SPIRIT OF EDEN and LAUGHING STOCK without the self-indulgence.

Ashes of Us is up there with the best of Suede.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Thanks for the defence. Will the check the deluxe edition out on Grooveshark later on. 22 tracks is a lot.

I'm not aware of that edition. As far as I know, the album proper (and the only thing I've listened to in full) is a 12-track affair (although some of the tracks are indeed quite long).

There's also a two-CD special edition, the second disc featuring, I think, six tracks - these are things like Andrew Weatherall's remix of "2013".

There might be a couple of other tracks just on the Japanese edition, so, yeah, that probably brings the whole thing in at twenty tracks or so. But my point is that, leaving aside all these add-ons, More Light has only 12 tracks. Once you've heard 'em you've heard the album (in my book, anyway).

The album is currently up on Primal Scream's official YouTube channel, split by sides (side A, side B, side C and side D).

Well, I got as far as "Worm Tamer" and gave up. Tedious bollox. You can just about pull this stuff off in your late twenties, but when you're over 50 it's just pathetic.

Well, you didn't need to get as far as "Worm Tamer", which if I understand it correctly is the fourth track on the second disc of the limited edition (I haven't heard this track myself). You'd already finished the album with "It's Alright, It's OK"! (Correction: it has 13 tracks, not 12 as I'd stated erroneously.)

I'm surprised you found nothing at all to enjoy or even vaguely admire during the long and varied stretch between "2013" and "It's Alright, It's OK". Still, fair enough if More Light* does nothing for you.

*Oddly enough, More Light is also the title of the 2000 debut album by J Mascis + The Fog.

RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES -- Daft Punk

Now streaming on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/daft-punk/id5468295

Quite a concept here. I like it.

Loomis wrote:

Primal Scream - More Light.

Unexpectedly excellent, indeed by far the Scream's best album since 1991's Screamadelica (although that's perhaps not saying all that much). David Holmes' production is superb.

I'm not usually prone to the old 'Best since...' hyperbole, but I can comfortably call this album their best since XTRMNTR. Last three albums were patchy (some good songs, but overall a lack of positive or consistent direction), but this one really seems to have a lot more weight, spark and focus. Very content with it so far. My av should have been the album sleeve though :-(

Lazenby. wrote:

My av should have been the album sleeve though :-(

Exactly. I don't want to see Gillespie's ugly mug doing that devil horns pose. Better leave that to a silhouette.

Gave MORE LIGHT another try today. Enjoyed it much more this time. You've got to be in the right mood for it, and for a moody bastard like me, that's not always easy to time.

Love the little orchestral detour at the end of River of Pain. Who arranged that? Homes?

1984 - 1989 - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

Any fans here?

Jamming to Rudimental's debut album, "Home". Really digging it.

I'm listening to QOTSA's ... Like Clockwork at the moment.

I've always found QOTSA to be very esoteric, and so it usually takes me a few listens to decide how I feel about an album. This is more of the same, but I like it so far. Thematically, it's a little bleak in places, but I think there is something more going on, and it will take me a few listens to get to the bottom of it so far.

And continuing the band's habit of rotating its line-up and getting unusual guest-stars in, Sir Elton John makes an appearance on "Fairweather Friends" alongside Trent Renzor and Dave Grohl.

Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue

Boards Of Canada – TOMMOROW'S HARVEST

Yeezus.

Visage's 'Hearts and Knives' looked promising on paper, particularly when synthesiser boffins Mick MacNeil and Dave Formula announced their involvement. Unfortunately, there's nothing here that lives up to expectations.

MacNeil's 'She's Electric' is probably the best track and most directly references 'Fade to Grey'. I'm surprised it wasn't the first single. 

The Black Keys' El Camino. Came out last year. It's a lot more glam-sounding than their other popular album.
I've heard the songs play in malls, so maybe it's below the music sophisticates here. =p

I like the Black Keys, they do what they do well, and with panache. For Erica, they're a retro(gressive) guitar band and therefore subhuman.

Guitars should be inserted in their owners. No anaesthetic.

The song that plays when I walk into a room.

Alan Myers 1954 - 2013

Public Image Ltd - This Is PiL (2012). I became interested in John Lydon and co. after seeing them support The Stone Roses in London earlier this month. I was particularly intrigued by reports of amazing work by bassist Jah Wobble (who is not part of the band's current lineup). Maybe I haven't listened to the right tracks yet, or maybe their stuff just ain't my cup of tea, but I don't yet find myself blown away by the Public Image Ltd of yesteryear. This new album, however, now this I do like. A lot. There are some captivating grooves and impressive musicianship on tracks like "One Drop" and "Deeper Water". Also very partial to "Reggie Song" and, oh, yes, the epic and hypnotic closing number "Out of the Woods".

When it comes to the Golden Age of PIL, I think you'd enjoy METAL BOX the most (I know I do). It's by far the most dubby of their albums, and big part of that is thanks to Wobble and his scroll-neck fretless.

Cheers. I've been listening to some tracks from Metal Box today on your recommendation. Very different to This Is PiL (an incredibly polished, poppy and mainstream affair by comparison, not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that), indeed very different to just about anything else I've ever heard, although comparisons to Joy Division (one of my all-time favourite bands) do sometimes spring to mind, particularly when listening to "Poptones", which strikes me as having a similar flavour to "She's Lost Control". Having said that, what I've heard of Metal Box seems so icily bleak and unremittingly intense as to make Joy Division seem like One Direction. And it almost goes without saying that these are not conventionally-structured songs here - this is music that, on first listen at least, appears to make such huge demands on the listener as to make My Bloody Valentine seem like Cliff Richard. Is this cutting-edge brilliance or the emperor's new clothes? (Or, erm, something in between?) I can't quite decide yet, but this album is certainly.... interesting.

Ken lockie wrote Metal Box's best track radio 4, but never received credit.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Ken lockie wrote Metal Box's best track radio 4, but never received credit.

Was listening to "Radio 4" earlier. Reminds me a bit of Kraftwerk. It's okay, I suppose, but hardly anything to write home about (still, I daresay it's a grower), although I don't dispute your claim that it's the album's best track. It's interesting mostly by virtue of its context, being strikingly different to anything else on the record.