Music review: Primal Scream, ABC, Glasgow

With Aberdeen Beach Ballroom down and the Electric Fields festival still to be conquered, Primal Scream rode into their former home town to introduce their new album, Chaosmosis, in a relatively intimate setting more suited to their rabble-rousing gang mentality than the arenas they often fill these days.

Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream. Picture: Getty

Primal Scream | ABC, Glasgow | Rating ****

This time, there were girls in the gang, a somewhat shrieky backing vocalist plus bassist Simone Butler, adding their voices to the sleek pop chops of When The Light Gets In, Screamadelica throwback Trippin’ On Your Love and the headlong hurtle of When The Blackout Meets the Fallout.

But by the time the band tore into the pounding MC5-indebted garage rock of Accelerator, it was clear that this show was as much a celebratory joyride through their back catalogue as an opportunity to chew over new material.

The astutely paced set moved swiftly and fluently from the trippy atmosphere of Kill All Hippies and the motorik groove of Shoot Speed/Kill Light (complete with epilepsy-inducing light show) via comedown country ballad Cry Myself Blind to the urgent industrial disco of Swastika Eyes without drawing breath, before the party mainstays were rolled out.

Country Girl and Rocks were each as dumb as the other, the former punctuated with an audience salute to frontman “Bobby f***ing G”, while the encore was dominated by back-to-back renditions of bleeding heart ballad I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have and its hands-in-the-air repurposing as indie disco anthem Loaded.