Click Click: Primal Scream @ 9:30 Club
D.C. has had an embarrassment of good shows in the last seven days. Bloc Party, White Lies/Friendly Fires, Glasvegas, Cut Copy...but Friday's Primal Scream show at the 9:30 Club was the best of the bunch.
The Scream are an institution in the UK, but other than a stint opening for Depeche Mode in 1999, have never made real inroads on this side of the pond. It certainly doesn't help that they've jumped from label to label here, making their albums hard to come by. U.S. tours are also few and far between. The last time I saw them in the States was in 2000, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC, when the band were touring behind their excellent XTRMNTR album. Since then they've gone on to release three more albums and headline the Glastonbury Festival in 2005, all of which made Friday's show at the 9:30 Club long overdue.
Never one to play by the rules, the Scream eschewed a greatest hits set and instead focused on the latter half of their career. Just over a third of the 16-song set was devoted to tracks off of their last two records, Riot City Blues and Beautiful Future. Group think/conventional wisdom is that these two records don't hold up very well next to the band's Vanishing Point / XTRMNTR / Evil Heat heyday, but "Country Girl" and "Jail Bird" sounded right at home next to older staples like "Kill All Hippies" and "Miss Lucifer."
The band relied on their massive lighting rig (complete with lasers!) for most of the show's visual aspects. Lead Singer Bobby Gillespie was the only band member to do much on stage, playing the part of front-man to the hilt. Guitarist Andrew Innes, strangely dressed in white pants, a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat, like he was playing 18 holes with Jack Nicklaus after the gig or something, spent the night to Gillespie's right, coaxing all manner of riffs, effects, delays and feedback from his guitar. Former Stone Roses member Gary "Mani' Mounfield" was content at the back of the stage, holding everything together on the bass. His fretwork on "Miss Lucifer" was nothing short of jaw-dropping.
The set moved along at a good pace up until the final five songs. Starting with "Shoot Speed/Kill Light" and continuing with "Swastika Eyes", "Movin' On Up", "Rocks" and the finale of "Accelerator", the band really found their mark. It was an all-out attack on the senses - full of feedback, strobes, sirens and everything else the band could throw at the audience - and it was one of the best stretches of music I have ever seen at the 9:30 Club. The light show turned the venue into a scene right out of an early '90s rave - hands in the air and bodies moving everywhere.
As the final remnants of feedback from "Accelerator" dissipated into the night, the crowd stood around waiting for an encore that was not coming. Proof, that after 25+ years together, Primal Scream know to always leave the audience wanting more. Mission accomplished.
Openers Kuroma did a commendable job at an often thankless task - opening for a band people have waited years to see. The brainchild of Hank Sullivant (formerly of The Whigs and MGMT), Kuroma specialize in ramshackle pop in the spirit of early Flaming Lips with a dash of Queen thrown in for good measure. Upbeat pop numbers like "I Was The Rat" and "Paris" kept the audience's attention on the stage and not on their watch, waiting for the headliners.
Set List:
Kill All Hippies
Can't Go Back
Miss Lucifer
Country Girl
Jailbird
Bomb Drops
Beautiful Future
Deep Hit
Exterminator
Suicide Bomb
Sick City
Shoot Speed/Kill Light
Swastika Eyes
Movin' On Up
Rocks
Accelerator