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Gary "Mani" Mounfield is sitting in his hotel room of New York's Soho Grand, spouting off. He's feisty and fiercely political, this Primal Scream and former Stone Roses bassist, and he's using his time with various members of the American media to let 'em know about it.
"Britain's got a real drug culture," he says. "There's nothing much
else for people to do but get completely out of their minds most of
the time. So I wanna try and wise people up a bit and say, 'Well,
yeah do it, but don't fucking hand in your brain, because
governments like to have people disenfranchised and smacked up or
cracked up, because it takes away people's will to fight.' So we've
got nothing against people getting stoned and what have you, but be
careful what they're trying to do to you surreptitiously."
"Mani" has spoken, and in the process (and in their own way) his
band Primal Scream have just grown up. The same group that rose to
success in Britain on the back of the legendary excesses, echoed in
songs like "Loaded," "Higher Than the Sun" and "Medication," while
straddling middle age, took up a call to arms for their sixth
effort, XTRMNTR. Recorded substance teetotal, the band
descended upon its London studio and churned out the kind of
politically conscious and sonically challenging album that would
leave many a young band salivating.
"For the Scream, it's the most lucid we've ever been," says
Mounfield. "I think we all kind of recognized that the studio isn't
the place to be getting off your wig. You can do that when you're
out on the road...if you want to. We just wanna be true to
ourselves and put the best performance that we can and make the
best music we can, so I think we've kind of grown up in a way, a
little bit. It sounds strange to say it because we're supposed to
be the baddest-arsed-junkie-bastards in Britain right now, but I
think we're just a bunch of pussycats, man."
Although the band had been around for years before, Primal Scream
made their first big mark in 1991 with Screamadelica, an
album, which in Britain at least, became the penultimate hybrid of
Sixties flower-powered, skunk-driven idealism and early Nineties
ecstasy drizzled higher-consciousness raving. Led by rock &
roll icon-in-the-making Scotsman Bobbie Gillespie, Primal Scream
developed a fan base that admired them as much for their musical
sensibilities as their extreme lifestyle. They were labeled
"indie," if only because they never stuck with one particular sound
long enough for it to be their trademark. They moved from the
indie-dance of Screamadelica to the Stonesy rock &
roll of 1994's Give Out But Don't Give Up to 1997's
Vanishing Point, which played like a guitar-saturated,
electronic-driven film soundtrack.
XTRMNTR is a matured sonic assault, cementing the Primal
Scream sound as the cosmic paring of the guttural angry-young-man
gusto of Iggy and the Stooges with the cerebral, electronic urban
textures mapped out by electronica heavy weights Unkle and Sasha.
And in the middle of it all, Bobby G takes on totalitarianism
("Swastika Eyes") and of course the almighty political scapegoat,
capitalism ("Everyone's a prostitute...," from "Exterminator"), all
while maintaining a state of being "groovy," according to
Mounfield.
"Primarily our job is to make people dance," he says. "And we just
wanna get people political again and get them on the streets so
they don't take no shit."
But the war isn't about to be fought alone, sonically anyway. The
Chemical Brothers show up on "Swastika Eyes" ("We wanted to make a
really kitschy, gay disco tune," says Mounfield, "and no one does
gay disco better than the Chemical Brothers".), while the
film-scoring David Holmes pitches in on "Blood Money" and New
Order's Bernard Sumner adds guitar to "Shoot Speed/Kill Light"
("It's good when you get to meet and work with your heroes"). It's
the Scream's most definitive and cohesive record to date, and the
one most likely to change their reputation from rock & roll
drug casualties, to bona fide loud-mouthed hell-raisers.
"We've always had a feeling since we started recording the songs
that it's time for Primal Scream at the minute 'cos music,
especially in Britain, is really careerist and conservative and no
one seems to have any opinions," Mounfield says. "But we're still a
bunch of big mouths and we don't mind shooting from the hip when it
comes down to it. If we get in trouble with things, then so be it
-- but at least we haven't been quiet little mice."
Primal Scream kick off their U.S. tour this weekend.
JOLIE LASH
(May 27, 2000)