Primal Scream - 1997 - Vanishing Point

 

Primal Scream's third album, Screamadelica (1991), is still such a great achievement (we at Birch Way were big fans of the two early singles from 1990- "Loaded" and "Come Together") and so their follow-up, 1994's Give Out But Don't Give Up, which was a love letter to the Rolling Stones seminal 1972 album Exile On Main Street, was pretty jarring. I love it now, and to Glen's credit, he loved it then, but at the time, I just disregarded Primal Scream as another British band from the Madchester era that just didn't follow-though. 

Of course, I was very wrong, and happily so. In July 1997, I was in Europe on my honeymoon when this album came out and I bought it in Paris and it became the soundtrack for the Eurail. Other albums from that trip just off the top of my head: Blur's self-titled album, Teenage Fanclub's Songs from Northern Britain, and The Charlatans Tellin' Stories. I also have very distinctive memories of The Chemical Brothers' "Block Rockin' Beats" and Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains."

Bobby Gillespie described this album as "an anarcho-syndicalist speedfreak road-movie record." Inspired by the 1971 cult film of the same name (which I still have yet to see), Vanishing Point has a dark momentum to it that, to me, still ranks as their definitive album.

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