10 alternative titles for the new Primal Scream album

Chaosmosis suggests a little too much spontaneity, a little too much rock’n’roll freedom for the 11th album from what is essentially 2016’s answer to the worldweary nostalgia of The Soup Dragons, without any decent tunes, or beats. Or ideas. Or visuals. Or vocals. Or production. Mind you, it is impossible not to think of this a ‘return to form’, bearing in mind how low Primal Scream have set the bar over the past couple of decades.

1. Rediffusion – means roughly the same, but more transparent. Not content with reliving other people’s pasts for the overwhelming majority of their career, Primal Scream are now trawling through their own pasts in a Stars on 45 type rediffusion of ‘classic’ (usage not advisable) Scream.
2. Mid-life Crisis – “C’mon!” intones Gillespie on the opening song Trippin’ On Your Love, sounding more desperate than ever. “Everybody now… Go! Get ready!” If this was a movie, it would be Die Hard 53. Without the violent bits.
3. Re-Loaded – time to boot that system up one last time, retell the origins of Gillespie as a rock’n’roll rebel who gets his kicks by stealing everyone else’s licks. Well, it worked for Bowie. Sometimes.
4. Death Rattle – sounds sexy and fatalistic, like something Tarantino could have dreamed up. Honest, too.
5. The Illusion of Rebellion – see above. “We’re living in very extreme times, but that doesn’t seem to be reflected in the music that I hear or the art that I see. It seems that people are kind of asleep or they’ve been anaesthetised or they just don’t care” – Bobby Gillespie, 2013. Oh do fuck off back to your pills, granddad.
6. Echo Drek – the remix of a remix of remix of an idea so tired no one can remember what it was in the first place.
7. Now That’s What Bobby Calls Music, 94 – this is the album MetaCritic would make if it was a band. Which it isn’t.
8. The Drugs Don’t Work – near unbelievably, ‘100% or Nothing’ sounds like The Alarm while quoting the same fucking Ike & Tina Turner lyric that everyone quotes. Ask Gillespie’s old mucker McGee. No one ever got rich in rock’n’roll by being original.
9. Mr Cellophane
10. All Haim and no Bone

Everybody in the house wave your arms in the air, like you just don’t care. No need for pretence any more, is there?

As I said in my review of the Scream’s previous album, 2013’s uh, somewhat predictable More Light, “Edgy, like pulling the wings off butterflies”.

I can see me returning to this like I do with The Clash.