In their 30-year career, Primal Scream have demonstrated a savvy for keeping themselves current. They joined the anorak convention with their cut "Velocity Girl" on the C86 compilation; helped push acid house into the mainstream with 1991's rave-rock symbiosis Screamadelica; and then pushed rock to new extremes with 2000's punktronica assault XTRMTR. That drive still animates them today: At a time when the remaining bands of their vintage are locked into the album-retrospective tour circuit or releasing pro-forma records, Primal Scream’s 11th full-length, Chaosmosis, sees them keeping pace with 21st-century pop, recruiting new-school divas Sky Ferreira and Haim in an admirable attempt to keep their median audience age on the shy side of 40.
In the Scream discography, Chaosmosis’ closest antecedent is 2008’s Beautiful Future, another modestly scaled, melodically focussed record loaded with then-au courant collaborators (Bjorn Yttling, CSS singer Lovefoxxx, Josh Homme). However Chaosmosis is the band’s most lyrically intimate, earnest and heartfelt record to date, which is something of a new look for a group that usually deals in PLUR platitudes and politicized screeds.
The album’s most affecting songs—like the simmering synth-pop of “(Feeling Like a) Demon Again” and the beautifully aching tropical-soul serenade “I Can Change”—find a dejected Bobby Gillespie surveying the wreckage of a broken relationship, and provide rare glimpses of the sunken eyes that he normally shields behind his wraparound sunglasses. And while the showdown with Ferreira on “Where the Light Gets In” initially suggests a replay of Gillespie’s prior tryst with Kate Moss on “Some Velvet Morning,” its knockout chorus thrusts the song to the ranks of the Scream’s best singles.
The aforementioned tracks make good on Chaosmosis’ promise of a modern-pop makeover. But when the hooks aren’t as sharp (like on the morse-code electro of “Carnival of Fools” or the chillout comp–ready “Autumn in Paradise”), the album’s temperate energy and mid-tempo pacing threaten to render the band indistinguishable from the synth-smeared indie-pop acts filling up the medium-font tier on a Coachella bill. And in lieu of any unifying principle, other songs offer the faintest echoes of past glories. From the house pianos and bongo breaks on down, the opening “Tripping on Your Love” is a shameless Screamadelica simulacrum that asks nothing more of the Haim sisters than to shout out that hokey title ad infinitum. “Golden Rope” is the obligatory ’70s-Stones rehash (complete with a Bobby Keys-style sax solo and “hallelujah!” hosannas), but delivered with a lumbering chug that suggests even the band are getting bored with this mode.
Of course, Primal Scream have always been wandering spirits. But they’ve always sounded fully committed to whichever path they chose, no matter how misguided it may be. Chaosmosis, by contrast, is encumbered by an uncharacteristic restraint and tentativeness. The bracing, sometimes violent collision of rock ‘n’ roll and dance music that’s powered Primal Scream’s best work has been melted down here into mercurial droplets—shiny and radiant, to be sure, but ultimately non-descript.
