Bobby Gillespie has not been idle in the eight years since Primal Scream’s last album: his memoir was well received, as was an excellent album of duets with Jehnny Beth. But the 12th Primal Scream wasn’t really on his to-do list until producer David Holmes began sending him rhythm tracks, which formed the basis for the 11 songs here. As with any Primal Scream album, its predecessor is a foreign country, the incoherent synth-pop of 2016’s Chaosmosis giving way here to something approximating lavishly orchestrated, gospel choir-embellished 70s Philly soul – think a less strutting Give Out But Don’t Give Up.
It’s a decent backdrop for Gillespie’s most personal set of lyrics to date, most notably on mortality-acknowledging opener Ready to Go Home, which he sang to his dying father in hospital. That’s his father, pictured in 1960, on the cover as well, and it was Gillespie Sr’s experiences in the army that informed the reflective False Flags. The album closer is more overtly political, attacking as it does English colonialism by referencing Culloden and Cromwell in Ireland, although there are barely veiled references to Palestine there too – hinted at in the track’s title, Settlers Blues.
