Primal Scream. Come Ahead.
This is huge album, full of unexpected joys. It opens with Ready To Go Home where an acapella gospel intro builds into joyous, swaggering funk.
‘When my time finally comes, I’ll be ready’, intones Bobby Gillespie who sang the upbeat, darkly humorous number to his trade unionist father Bob the night before he died.
Where early Primal Scream channelled the psychedelic sixties, their 12th album draws on Motown and early 70s Philadelphia soul. It’s as if the Delfonics had grown up in the Glasgow tenements but lacked a little joie de vivre.
It’s not one-note either. Heal Yourself is a blissful and bewitching possibly autobiographical ballad about men, broken through addiction, finding salvation through the love of a good woman.
The woman who saved Gillespie was his stylist wife Katy England.
The eleven tracks span old-school soul (Innocent Money), hearty funk (Circus Of Life) and left-wing politics.
The Centre Cannot Hold is a groovy but brooding paranoiac commentary on the flaky complacency of contemporary politicians.
While the sinister Deep Dark Water reflects the worrying undercurrent of modern geopolitics. ‘All systems are failing,’ warns Bobby, adding ‘echoes from the past could engulf us’ and we’ll ‘go like cattle to the slaughter’ unless we change course.
‘Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it,’ he notes, echoing Churchill’s “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.”
The dark mood is contrasted with a sprinkling of flamenco guitars.
Producer and DJ David Holmes has helped breathe new life into the Scottish quartet who went platinum with their superb third album, 1991’s Screamadelica.
The whole set feels refreshed. It’s also combative, a gauntlet thrown down to naysayers and detractors.
The title ‘Come ahead’ is the Glaswegian equivalent of ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’. Belting.
Rick Wakeman. YESSONATA.
Inspired by Rick’s popular YES Suite, this fresh adaptation contains 30-plus musical fragments from his time with the prog-rock giants all played solo on his Steinway piano. The result, including Awaken and Close To The Edge, is knitted together seamlessly. Elegant and sublime, it’s backed with his King Arthur piano suite. In music, the word ‘genius’ is over-used; in Rick’s case it is well deserved.
Laura Marling. Patterns In Repeat.
At 34, the award-winning English folk singer has made her finest album yet. Inspired by the birth of her daughter, it’s lush, warm, and soothing. She opens with Child Of Mind, a blissful ballad about motherhood, but also reflects on old prejudices. On Your Girl she sings, ‘I’m trying to play a boy’s game, feeling like a pawn inside a pornscape.’