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.