Album reviews: Primal Scream | James | Underworld

Three mainstays of the Nineties are back with sleek, elegant updates of their signature sounds

Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream

It’s almost like the Noughties never happened as three titans of the Nineties indie/club crossover movement – ragtag revellers Primal Scream, cool electronica customers Underworld and arena rockers James – deliver their latest offerings this week, each displaying a degree of elegant maturity.

Primal Scream are the most changed of the trio, but reacting against their previous musical offerings has always been their modus operandi, creating a sense of anticipation round each new album. What rock’n’roll robes will they be slipping into this time? And how will frontman and mouthpiece Bobby Gillespie spin their latest rebirth?

Thirty years into their career, their eleventh album Chaosmosis (***) really does break considerable new ground for the band, featuring some of the most commercial pop music they have ever produced, alongside more familiar sonic grooves. With its rolling house piano, boozy string samples and bursts of acid rock guitar, opening number Trippin’ On Your Love is an unabashed throwback to the Screamadelica era, with punchy sister act Haim in the role previously filled by diva belter Denise Johnson.

This album’s title is another portmanteau term, originally coined by French philosopher Pierre-Félix Guattari to describe the processing of the white noise of the modern age. A typically colourful Jim Lambie-designed sleeve looks like a scrambled test card, while Gillespie responds with what he considers to be “ecstatic, depressive realism”. In practise, this means bodyswerving old school rock’n’roll in favour of more subtle shimmering electro pop on the far from demonic likes of (Feeling Like A) Demon Again.

This is surprisingly slick stuff. There is something deliberately artificial about the simple syncopated synthesizer backing of I Can Change, topped with the rather unsettling sound of Bobby Gillespie’s breathy croon. The sleek New Wave pop of lead single Where The Light Gets In, featuring a touch of attitude from guest vocalist Sky Ferreira, is polished up with electro sheen.

They are on more familiar territory with the propulsive garage rock number Golden Rope and the industrial turbo-punk of When the Blackout Meets the Fallout, but this latter track is little more than a brief interlude before the impish electro pop of Carnival of Fools which sounds more like something one might expect to hear on the forthcoming Gorillaz album. Kudos to Primal Scream for moving out of their comfort zone, even if the results have them flirting brazenly with the mainstream.

Underworld refine their class act with their first album in five years. The duo of Karl Hyde and Rick Smith have been far from idle in that time, overseeing the music for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics and revisiting their classic 1994 debut dubnobasswithmyheadman on tour, as well as working on solo albums, collaborations and TV music.

Barbara Barbara, we face a shining future (***) is a judiciously crafted, meditative, at times almost horizontal album named after the last words spoken by Smith’s father. Opening track I Exhale has anthemic aspirations but the rest is a chilled suite punctuated with moments of hands-in-the-air bliss, understated soulful yearning and a hypnotic New Agey Spanish guitar excursion.

Mancunian veterans James sound similarly at peace on Girl At The End Of The World (***) though its harmony was hard won, apparently. However, their favoured producer Brian Eno was on hand to kiss it better and you would never know the creative struggle from the seamless, streamlined results, encompassing the country whimsy of Feet Of Clay, happy-sad pop thrum of Waking and tasteful trance backing which is grafted on to a number of tracks.