This came out in 2000 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
For years now, the only thing most Primal Scream albums have had in common is that they have had almost nothing in common.
Let’s review: The Scottish rockers’ first release, 1987’s Sonic Flower Groove, was a jangly pop affair. Their second, a self-titled 1989 album, went in for the hard-rocking, harder-grooving sound of The Stooges and MC5. They followed that up with 1991’s Screamadelia, their first major-label offering, which featured a then-innovative brand of danceable acid-house indie-pop.
So far so good. But then, on 1994’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up, they threw everybody for a loop, ditching their style wholesale and taking up the retro-rock banner, exemplified by channeling The Rolling Stones, most obviously on the hit single Rocks — perhaps the best Keith Richards riff that Keef never wrote. Finally, in 1997 they flip-flopped again, returning to the world of electronic dance-rock with the dark and trippy comeback album Vanishing Point, an ambitious work that redeemed their status as critics’ darlings. (Got all that?)
Which brings us to their sixth studio disc Xtrmntr — and yes, it’s something new once again. Only this time, nobody gets left out in the cold. It’s taken them 15 years but, finally, Primal Scream have got their act together — literally. Whatever incarnation of the band you might have liked — popsters, punkers, rockers, ravers — you’ll meet them again somewhere on Xtrmntr, a sprawling, snarling monster of a disc that plops all their musical personalities and styles into the rock ’n’ roll Cuisinart and hits puree.
As you might expect, what you end up with is often dark, sludgy and pungently nasty. Picking up where Vanishing Point left off, opening track Kill All Hippies — which gets my vote for Greatest Song Title Of The Week — kicks things off with greasy, funky electronica. Accelerator is a blast of noisy garage-punk excess and glory. Exterminator (apparently, the lads are fully in touch with their anger this time out) boasts a rubbery groove and a buzzing, loping beat a la Happy Mondays or Black Grape. Swastika Eyes can only be described as Iggy Pop fronting The Chemical Brothers. And so on, through 10 different tunes of chillout techno, authentically sinister hip-hop and even bruising, hard-edged jazz-funk that chases the voodoo down like Jesus Lizard covering Miles Davis circa ’75.
Unsurprisingly for a work this varied in taste, tone and texture, there were several producers behind the boards, including My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields and the aforementioned Chemical Brothers, each of whom puts an individual stamp on the proceedings.
So what holds it together? Plenty of negative energy, man. From the humming, buzzing amps and squealing spookhouse synths to leader Bobby Gillespie’s anxiety-attack, expletive-laced lyrics (in Pills, he chants the F-word more than two dozen times), Xtrmntr is a sinister, intense affair — a dystopian miasma of violence, swastikas, parasites, insects, murder and speed (in all senses of the word). Like the Frankenstein construct it is, it’s powerful, unpredictable and dangerous.
With any luck, that’s something it’ll have in common with their next albums.
