A few years ago, I received an early morning phone call from Nick Cave’s former PR, berating me for not crediting his band the Bad Seeds in an album review. She was quite right. As Cave says, with a hint of paternal pride, during this powerhouse Glasgow show: ‘This band can do anything.’
It’s not just that the Bad Seeds’s task ranges from delicately enhancing the most nakedly exposed ballads to unleashing a raging firestorm of noise. It’s that supporting a performer as mercurial as Cave takes oodles of nous and empathy. He’s a wild thing, but they never once lose him.
Cave brings to mind that volatile drunk left lingering at the fag-end of a house party
Alternating between sitting at the piano and patrolling the apron of the stage, where he clasps countless hands and leers wolfishly into the pit, Cave brings to mind that volatile drunk left lingering at the fag-end of a house party: one minute slumped in maudlin despair, mumbling weird words about the girl that got away, the next sprung into antic life, unspooling manically, ranting about God. Which is to say, he is never less than terrifically good value.
Cave is touring his new record, Wild God. A couple of those songs feel stodgy, their religiosity and call-and-response gospel vocalisations verging on the formulaic. But Cave has reached the point where you suspect it doesn’t much matter what he plays. His energy, his engagement, his control, his complete commitment to being Nick Cave, brings everything into compelling focus.
Much of the older material – ‘Tupelo’, ‘From Her to Eternity’, ‘The Mercy Seat’ – are not so much songs as extended exercises in churning texture, allowing him free reign to rage and prowl. Hearing such visceral bloodletting in a shiny arena feels both strange and reassuring. ‘Red Right Hand’, the murderous blues song adopted as the theme tune to Peaky Blinders, has become a cheery singalong; ‘Into My Arms’ a modern hymn. How far he, or we, or both, have travelled.
Primal Scream, on the other hand, appear to be heading in the wrong direction. Throughout their 40-odd year career, they have tended to make two kinds of records: good ones and bad ones. Come Ahead is not one of the good ones.
The effectiveness of lead singer Bobby Gillespie, one of rock and roll’s great chancers, lives and dies on the strength of his support network. The bad news (for him) is that this is dwindling. Former core members of Primal Scream, Robert Young and Martin Duffy, are dead. Andrew Innes is apparently still involved, although he made his contributions to this record remotely and doesn’t appear to have been much involved in its genesis. In extremis, Gillespie turned to DJ and producer David Holmes, who has worked well with the band in the past. Even he can’t prevent Come Ahead feeling like a solo album in all but name, the band branding slapped on for the sake of expediency.
It’s a weight Gillespie struggles to carry alone. He can’t really sing, which is fine. Plenty of rock singers can’t really sing. Nick Cave, indeed, is no Caruso. In any case, we’re already well aware of Gillespie’s vocal limitations, and so is he, which is why for so much of his career he has merrily danced, recited, maraca-ed and woo-wooed, leaving the heavy lifting to others. It’s no coincidence that the best Primal Scream albums are the ones on which Gillespie knew when to beat a tactical retreat.
Here, he’s front and centre for 65 minutes, his starter-portion voice scaffolded by all-you-can-eat gospel choirs. Occasionally, as on ‘Heal Yourself’ and ‘Melancholy Man’, he fancies himself as a lounge crooner. The results are predictably unconvincing. Between the limpid vocals and the cliché-riddled words – ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’ – rhythm emerges as the most diverting element. Primal Scream have never been shy about displaying their influences. Here, they lean heavily into Curtis Mayfield, Philly soul, Afro-Cuban grooves, fun enough but rarely transcending pastiche. The scratchy guitars on the lithe ‘Love Insurrection’ ape Nile Rogers, but as a disco diva Gillespie is more Chic Murray than Chic.
Come Ahead would make a decent EP and contains the seed of a good idea: to dance against the dying of the light and preach compassion in the face of conflict. But as it goes on and on, it loses even this tentative sense of urgency and identity. ‘Deep Dark Waters’ is a thin New Order knock-off. ‘False Flags’ takes eight tripped-out minutes to tell us war is bad. On ‘Settlers Blues’, a dreary opiated waltz, the GCSE-level exposition of injustice across the centuries lasts almost as long as the events it describes.
Primal Scream badly needs a shot of energy and imagination. Rather than writing dirges such as ‘Settlers Blues’, Gillespie’s time might be better spent trying to entice a Bad Seed or two into the fold.
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