PRIMAL SCREAM
Vanishing Point (Sony)
Three Primal Scream albums from their five-year pre- and post-millennium run are being remastered and reissued with accompanying B-sides, unreleased songs, sleevenotes and enhanced artwork. The Bunker Trilogy, as it’s been freshly dubbed, comprises Vanishing Point, XTRMNTR and Evil Heat: respectively from 1997, 2000 and 2002, and the rollout begins at the beginning.
A relentless tour schedule for Give Out But Don’t Give Up, released in 1994 and the predecessor to Vanishing Point, left the group narcotically burned out. “Some men didn’t come out the other side,” commented Andrew Weatherall, Primal Scream associate and sometime producer, in an interview at the time. Though the band retreated to their own Bunker studio in 1995, it was a minor miracle that Vanishing Point got over the finishing line at all – let alone how remarkable an album it is.
Vanishing Point is partly inspired by the 1971 cult film of the same name in which Kowalski, an ex-cop and Vietnam veteran, drives a Dodge Challenger from Utah to Denver with haste fuelled equally by Benzedrine and the cops pursuing him. There’s no happy ending in sight, but there are some great tunes on his car radio and a DJ who takes up Kowalski’s cause live on air. The outlaw-heading-towards-oblivion theme could function as a metaphor for Primal Scream’s collective state of mind at the time.
A major lineup change saw Stone Roses bassist Mani enter the fray after the Manchester group imploded. One of three Primal Scream band members no longer alive, along with Weatherall, his thunderous bass playing dominates the album’s lead single Kowalski, arguably one of the most uncommercial singles to trouble the UK top 10 since PiL’s Death Disco in 1979. He was joined in the Bunker by dub reggae don Augustus Pablo, who plays harmonica on Star, and the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock, bassist on Medication.
Burning Wheel, a psychedelia-doused breakbeat beast of an album opener, stands to this day as one of the Scream’s best songs – as does the creeping, dread-infested Out Of The Void. The dub-heavy Stuka is marked by its “Got a demon in my head like a stinger” refrain; a cinematic groove prevails on If They Move… Kill ‘Em and Get Duffy, and Weatherall is back in the production chair for the hypnotic Trainspotting. The outlier, or breather, is a crazy version of Motörhead’s Motörhead, partially enlivened by a Darth Vader vocal effect.
The album ends with Long Life, in which Gillespie reaches out for the sun to block out the darkness, akin to The Doors’ The End in reverse. A dark, psychedelic dubbed out fever nightmare, there’s a case for Vanishing Point being Primal Scream’s finest album, and a lock for most fans’ top three.
words DAVID NOBAKHT
