The Beat Surrender

Like a lot of bands that have been around for a while, the longer they go on the less anticipated album releases are for Primal Scream these days. They do though still have the magical ability to surprise and delight you with a real quality piece of work, as they have done me with new album Beautiful Future.

The days of Screamadelica may be well past them now, It’s not often now that they produce songs that will become a staple in a Deejays record box like Moving On Up, Come Together or Loaded. I still don’t leave the house to deejay without a copy of Screamadelica with me.

In fact singles wise they probably haven’t delivered a classic for a good while now and this album is no different as I don’t think lead single Can’t Go Back is the strongest on offer here. If you were looking for potential singles on here, I would instead have pointed you in the direction of Beautiful Future and I Love To Hurt (You Love To Be Hurt).

Beautiful Future is the opening track on the album and probably my favourite here, a very infectious chiming track that drives along beautifully. I Love To Hurt (You Love To Be Hurt) has more of a pulsing electronic beat to the heart of the song that has Bobby Gillespie and Lovefoxx from CSS sharing vocal duties.

Aside from the potential of those tracks as singles the rest of the album also sits really well together, which is always important. Uptown has a lovely down-tempo groove and a lyrical theme of living for the weekend and the downer that going back to work on a Monday is, while The Glory Of Love goes for more of a dirty groove behind it.

Two of the weaker (but still decent) album tracks come towards a slight lull in the middle, Suicide Bomb and Beautiful Summer are nice enough, but Zombie Man is the track that lifts you through that part of the album, a blues-rock track that sounds like a distant cousin of Rocks.

Things pick up really well towards the end of the album again though as you get a hat-trick of collaborations to finish it off. First up is the previously mentioned Lovefoxx song, this is followed by Linda Thompson who contributes vocals to a cover of the Fleetwood Mac song Over & Over and Josh Homme helps out on album closer Viva! which gives the track more of a beefy feel to the guitar.

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