Live Review: Primal Scream at Usher Hall Delivers Phenomenal Sound and Energy

Primal Scream are far better experienced live than recorded – so if you’ve ever listened to them on the radio or otherwise, and thought ‘that’s OK’, then the chances are that Bobby Gillespie and co will knock your socks off in person. This is big band synthrock with lashings of house and soul, with heavy brushes of country, disco, gospel and more. The result is a wall of phenomenal sound, superbly mixed and more than the sum of its many parts.

The band also have a fab new album, Come Ahead, to pluck numbers from to augment all-time crowdpleasers like ‘Country Girl’, ‘Movin’ On Up’ and ‘Come Together’. Amongst the newbies, ‘Love Insurrection’ is a particularly terrific, slightly psychedelic number, whilst the more thoughtful ‘Deep Dark Waters’ offers a deeper, more rhythmic experience than its recording.

“That’s what happens when you assemble a 12-strong band of outstanding musicians, including members of the House Gospel Choir, Alex White of Fat White Family on saxophone, and boogie-woogie supremo Terry Miles on keyboards.”

However, the magic of seeing Primal Scream live is that, for a couple of hours, even tracks you’ve paid little attention to over the years are transformed into bangers. That’s what happens when you assemble a 12-strong band of outstanding musicians, including members of the House Gospel Choir, Alex White of Fat White Family on saxophone, and boogie-woogie supremo Terry Miles on keyboards.

Ok, so Bobby is just about unintelligible when muttering between songs (maybe the sound techs are doing their bit to avoid political controversy), and opening the extended encore with the doleful ‘Melancholy Man’ is a curious choice. Well, he doesn’t talk all that much, and ‘Melancholy Man’ is followed by the 1-2 knock-out of ‘Come Together’ and ‘Rocks’. The pulsing, raucous joy of a packed audience chanting ‘Get Your Rocks Off Honey’ is a titanic way to sign off.

All in all, the Come Ahead tour finds Primal Scream in excellent shape and ready to please existing fans and win a few more. It’s not every band that sounds better than they do in the studio, and it’s worth experiencing at least once.

In Edinburgh, Primal Scream brought Baxter Dury along to play support act. The man has immense energy and buckets of self-confidence but with such lyric-heavy numbers a little more sound checking before kick-off would have helped. I suspect he’s a witty and challenging artist to experience in the right venue all the same.