At the turn of 90s, Primal Scream were one of the first groups to transform themselves from a conventional rock band into a production team. Breaking down traditional instrumental roles, the band became studio silly putty, collaborating with any number of producers. It's a concept that's since been embraced by the likes of Radiohead and the Flaming Lips, but where those groups have taken a studious, science-lab approach to their experimentalism, Primal Scream still project a venerable image of rock'n'roll hedonism. They unapologetically celebrate (and occasionally decry) their chemical consumption in song, mouth off in the press about crap bands and evil politicians, and load up their videos with Kate Moss cameos. Taken as a whole, Primal Scream's scattershot, trend-spotting discography doesn't so much represent a search for new sounds as a search for the best drugs: ecstasy (1991's epochal acid-house address Screamadelica), weed (1997's dubtronic odyssey Vanishing Point), speed (2000's explosive XTRMNTR), coke (2002's totally wired Evil Heat), and whatever horrific substance deludes them into releasing a Rolling Stones knockoff every 12 years (1994's Give Out But Don't Give Up, 2006's Riot City Blues).
Beautiful Future is an especially rich title coming from a band with such a sloppy past, but its concise, laser-focussed 10-song tracklist-- bearing the pop-golden touch of producers Paul Epworth (Bloc Party, the Rapture) and Bjorn Yttling (Peter Bjorn and John, Lykke Li)-- suggests Primal Scream's latest high is sobriety. The opening title track features the most joyous, clear-headed melody they've sung since Screamadelica's "Movin' on Up", but in a much different dressing. Here, their Exile-era Stones influence yields to the cheeky glam of Sparks, from the jaunty piano riff, hand claps and ascending chorus, to Bobby Gillespie's wry commentary on middle-class privilege: "Congratulations/ You're living the dream/ In the dead heart of the control machine." The lyric may read like a typically agitated Gillespie spiel, but since assuming the role of techno-punk provocateurs on XTRMNTR-- in retrospect, a prescient anti-Bush/Blair manifesto-- Primal Scream's music has turned less pointedly political; rather than wage a carpet-bomb attack on governmental institutions, Beautiful Future seeks to serve those who live under their rule, seeming more sympathetic to the notion of materialism as escapism.
Military references are either deployed playfully (the "gas chambers" on "Beautiful Future" standing in for a culture choking on over-consumption) or lazily ("Suicide Bomb" being a cheap, ripped-from-the-headlines metaphor for goin' crazy), but even in the latter instance, the self-immolating image is followed by Gillespie declaring, "I see the beauty in everything." So it's fitting that Beautiful Future, musically, is drawn to the allure of cool, shimmering surfaces: "Can't Go Back" retrofits the brutalizing guitar holocaust of XTRMNTR's "Accelerator" as slick, Korg-crazed new wave, while the "Billie Jean" beat and Italo-disco sheen of "Uptown" glosses over its working-class-heroic chorus, positioning the band as unlikely but eager elder statesmen to the nu-romantic electro of Sam Sparro and Calvin Harris.
In a sense, Beautiful Future finds Primal Scream turning into the sort of bright, bouncy 80s pop band they initially stood in opposition to. And yet, the transition is pulled off with such guileless enthusiasm and steely precision that the mid-album drift back to ultraviolet stoner/psych dirge ("Suicide Bomb", "Beautiful Summer") feels like an unnecessary regression better left to the likes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. But the group also stumbles when they force the fun: The woeful "Zombie Man" repurposes several Screamadelica signifiers, but squanders them all on a stupid, sore-thumb chorus chant ("Hey hey zombie man/ Gonna put you in a can").
Fortunately, the record's weak center stretch is redeemed by a great closing trifecta that again finds Primal Scream putting their far-reaching Rolodex to use: CSS' Lovefoxxx trades cool come-ons with Gillespie on the evil-heated "I Love to Hurt (You Love to Be Hurt)", which sounds like the Plastic Ono Band rager "I Found Out" given an Ed Banger remix; an elegiac, Linda Thompson-assisted cover of the Fleetwood Mac Tusk track "Over and Over" effectively fills Primal Scream's one-soul-ballad-per-album quota; and though Josh Homme doesn't actually sing on the closing "Necro Hex Blues", his presence is made obvious by the song's relentless, motorik-metal pulse, giving the band's long-standing Stooges fetish a 21st-century makeover. Much like Screamadelica's acid-rock/acid-house crossover nearly 20 years ago, Beautiful Future proposes an equally unlikely union between Primal Scream's traditional leather-jacketed indie/Britpop base and today's neon-capped, bottle-serviced club kids. And if this attempted reconciliation produces moments of both elation and frustration, well, the band's erratic track record gives us no real reason to expect otherwise.
