Primal Scream – Screamadelica – 1991 – “…my light shines on.”

Two albums into their career, Glasgow’s Primal Scream gave us the critically lauded Screamadelica. In the context of 1991, I can appreciate how to get from that album to Achtung Baby or Blue Lines. Even after, I can see how we arrived at Definitely Maybe or the quirkier moments of Hello Nasty.

Screamadelica demonstrates a sonic endeavor that reveals itself in multiple dimensions. Genrewise, the listener has an overfunded offering of dance, dub, and even gospel to absorb. Moreover, the band seems to know this, judging by the possibly self-referential sample of Reverend Jesse Jackson proclaiming halfway through the album, “Today on this program you will hear gospel, and rhythm and blues, and jazz.  All those are just labels.  We know that music is music.” Despite this prismatic audio onslaught, Screamadelica’s character emerges, ever so shyly. In fact, it took several spins before the album got around to making a proper and polite introduction.

Once it did, and it occurred only upon listening to Side A’s closing track, ‘Come Together,’ Screamadelica actually came together for me, and I suddenly became aware of the album’s thematic vitality:  motifs of light (“Gettin’ out of the darkness…”), life (“Plant the path you want to roam…”), love (“I believe in you…”), inner strength and external unity (“Together we got power, apart we got power…”). Oh yeah, and drugs – but in that good, “I’m having too much fun to quit now,” kind of way.

Not to lose itself in the narcotic whimsy of Side A, Side B presents a chronological decline from the listener’s apex (and be sure to check out the track listing): Get loaded, get damaged, come down, reflect one last time on the good memories of being higher than the sun, and ultimately surrender this life while your soul carries on eternal, shining like the stars. As the spirit of the record powers down to its accordion-pulsed epilogue, it bids farewell to itself and the listener, separating itself from the decline and perhaps to be reborn anew someday.

In the end, I can understand why Screamadelica has received its praise over the years.    Nonetheless, I will resist the urge to debate the album or its strength because I don’t want to influence the debates that people should be having.  I merely want to encourage the listen that provokes the potential for such exchange or enlightenment.  Simply put, Screamadelica captures for me the rise and fall of a lifetime presented in a moment during the waning months of 1991, and it’s worth a listen…or two.