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Bobby Gillespie and Primal Scream tore the roof off of the 9:30 Club on Friday. (Kyle Gustafson / www.photokyle.com)
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
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great pics, as usual, Kyle.
yeah it was a pretty stunning show, too bad the 930 Club seemed about half empty. people totally missed out.
I think another thing that has held them back here is their constant change of music styles. Indeed, their later stuff has switched between hard-hitting synth and fuzzed guitar electro-rock (Vanishing Point, XTRMNTR, and Evil Heat) and bluesy retro-rock (Give Out and Riot City). And it's nearly unrecognizable next to the jangly pop of the early Creation Records era and the acid house of Screamadelica.
The Brits seem to wholeheartedly embrace bands/musicians through their musical changes (see Paul Weller, Peter Hook, etc). But here, I'm guessing that fans of "It Happens," "Loaded," or "Higher Than the Sun" don't want to hear "Country Girl," "Swastika Eyes," or "Accelerator" and vice-versa.
Man, I should have gone. It sounds like those last five songs would have been worth the price of admission alone!
So was I the only one that found their performance uninspired and boring? For the most part it seemed to me like they were just going through the motions, and had lost all of the energy that made the songs great in the first place. The guitars were sloppy (in particular, "Country Girl" was just a mess), and Bobbie Gillespie looked (and sang) like he'd have rather been anywhere else. At some points, it looked like the keyboardist was falling asleep. By the time they finally came into their own during the last few songs (which I agree were good -- it's too bad they couldn't muster that up earlier), I could barely be bothered to care anymore.
And when your one of your guitarists starts buying his entire wardrobe from Tommy Bahama, it's probably time to call it a day.
Yea i too was kind of unimpressed. Without going into detail ill just say it was poppy. To quote some random girl who came up to me "You dont look gay.. what are you doing here?" I didnt have a good answer hahah.
OK, two comments:
XTRMNTR is, perhaps, the best album of the last 20 years. No kidding. They haven't topped it since, and they never will.
Secondly, and this is a complete piece of Primal Scream/Depeche Mode geek trivia here...the Scream actually opened for the Mode in 1993, not 1999. Dave Gahan much more closely resembled Bobby Gillespie in '93 than he does now.
Jailbird sounded at home next to "older" staples like Kill All Hippies and Miss Lucifer? [Comic Book Guy] Jailbird is from "Give Out But Don't Give Up," released in 1994...which was almost as confusing a follow-up to "Screamadelica" as Ministry's "Land of Rape and Honey" was to "With Sympathy" and "Twitch." Almost. [/Comic Book Guy]
"So was I the only one that found their performance uninspired and boring?"
The impression I got was of a band that had been touring for 20-years and was playing a show to a half-full venue in Washington, D.C. Not that it's justifiable, but the sound was perfect, the lighting was awesome, and they played an amazing set, whether or not they appeared to be super pumped to be there.
In summary, I thought the show was fucking kickass.
Dirty hippies.