Primal Scream have spent much of this century on autopilot. Every album after 2000 XTRMNTR respectfully recreated frontman Bobby Gillespie's staples: gritty grooves, quasi-political lyrics, melodies equally suited to a 2am warehouse party. or Rolling Stones ballads. Toppings are changing — it's 2016 Chaosmosis had Sky Ferreira and Haim, in 2013 More light it featured DJ and Steven Soderbergh collaborator David Holmes — but generally, if you've heard one Primal Scream album in the last 25 years, you've heard them all. This also applies to the 12 of the Scottish bandu album, Come Forwardbut at least it embraces a new flavor: Gillespie's longtime love of funk and soul.
The specter of the Stax rhythm section haunts album opener 'Ready to Go Home', where a gospel choir sings about being ready for the time to come, punctuated by anxious strings, pounding bass and jazz horns that add a throbbing tension. This is Primal Scream's first new album since the death of Gillespie's father and the band's keyboardist Martin Duffy—an old family photo of Gillespie's dad graces the cover—and his understated vocal delivery sounds shaken by recent encounters with death. they feel peace or comfort. Gillespie excels at writing in the open, and “Ready to Go Home” establishes that Come forward as a nostalgia trip through the soul influences that, while present in Primal Scream's DNA from the beginning, have never felt so obvious.
Holmes returns here as a producer. this reunion is more successful than the more extensive and dense More lightas Gillespie lets him transform Primal Scream into the sleek, muscular band for a lost of the ocean film. Come forward it culminates with the one-two punch of “Innocent Money” and “Melancholy Man”. The cinematic first could soundtrack the style of a classic Gordon Parks film, or at least Tarantino's bad memory of Blaxploitation, while the improbable second comes from Gillespie's 2023 score for Émilie Deleuze. 5 hectaresreworked by Holmes and longtime Primal Scream sidekick guitarist Andrew Innes.
The album falters in the back half, where many songs seem to blur together into one long, undifferentiated jam as repetition fatigue sets in. Lyrically, the songs that aren't specifically about Gillespie's father rehash the same leftist critique of class and politics we've been hearing since 1987—valid and relatable wishes for a better world sung by a successful rock star who sounds almost bored, like to mutter “I yet do I have to sing about this shit?' between downloads. If you're actively looking for a new Primal Scream album in 2024, you've probably already heard and agreed with everything Gillespie has to say.
