LIVE: PRIMAL SCREAM – Fremantle, 16 Jan 2025

LIVE: PRIMAL SCREAM – Fremantle, 16 Jan 2025
Fremantle Prison, with WOLVES & CHOCOLATE BULLETS
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
Photography by Linda Dunjey

If it feels slightly incongruous enjoying a tasty beverage and some fine rock n’ roll music twenty or so meters from a once-active gallows and cells where prisoners were beaten, then perhaps Primal Scream are the best band to make this strange setting make sense. Through twelve albums they have relentlessly refused to conform or comply, never repeating themselves as they build up an impressively eclectic and anti-authoritarian catalogue of sound fueled by restless hearts, wild spirits and relentless experimentation (both musical and pharmaceutical).

Their set tonight ranges from gentle, soulful ballads to Exile On Main Street-style rock to neo-industrial anarcho grind n’ roll, peppered with plenty of anti-establishment rants – exactly the sort of thing the former management of this place might have sought to criminalise.

Opener Wolves & Chocolate Bullets are a pleasant start to the evening, delivering a highly competent – though a little overlong – set of tuneful mid-paced rockers featuring highlights To Mars And Back, No No No No and Freeway to a crowd spread throughout the grounds, happy to lounge on the grass and enjoy the gentle vibes after a scorching hot 40 degree day.

The crowd surge forward for the headliners as soon as the sun sets and they lurch into anarchy- and vitriol-laden Swastika Eyes. Bobby Gillespie is rake think in a white suit and black & reddish pink cowboy shirt; long-time foil Andrew Innes, slashing razor riffs on the guitar, smart casual in a green blazer and hat; bassist Simone Butler (last seen on our stages with Jesus & Mary Chain in 2024) resplendent in a flowing back dress enhanced with metallic trim stylishly cut to show plenty of leg. Terry Miles on keys wears a pimptastic purple suit, Alex White (sax, flute and more) looks like a Miami Vice extra in a baggy ‘80s suit and beret, Darrin Mooney remains obscured behind his drum kit, never missing a beat.

These techno rhythms give way to the none-more-different Love Insurrection, a funky soul groove from new album Come Ahead complete with flute solo, impossible not to sway along to, before Jailbird takes us into Rolling Stones territory.

Gillespie admits they’ve never played a prison before, “it’s all our Johnny Cash fantasies come true!”

Gospel funk newie Ready To Go Home features the two female backing singers, names of whom I unfortunately missed, followed by another new track, Deep Dark Water.

Medication’s chorus “give me Medication to kill this hope” highlight the ever-present friction in the band’s lyrics: darkness versus light, but somehow the nihilism never overrides the searching for love and peace (or vice versa), like dark underworld hippies.

Gillespie introduces another new track – Innocent Money – as “protest disco” then there are two slow, bluesy numbers in a row – Heal Yourself and I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have.

The main set rounds out with a magnificent Loaded – the track which really started their global fame, a euphoric Movin’ On Up, and the Stonesy good times of Country Girl. Gillespie presides over what he calls “the church of rock n’ roll”, leading the congregation through a Glaswegian “folk song” chant of “here we fuckin’ go.”

After a short break it’s encore time, uplifting dirge-like newie Melancholy Man somehow hypnotic, wave after wave of pulsing groove crashing over the crowd, before an extended Come Together with a big singalong and a snippet of Elvis’ Suspicious Minds.

“This one’s for Bon Scott,” Gillespie says by way of introducing Rocks, another Stones-alike rocker which keeps the upbeat, dancing, singing, grooving vibe going just a little bit longer.

It’s been an hour and forty minutes on Primal Scream’s totally enthralling, eclectic musical and emotional rollercoaster, and the band – Gillespie especially – is as reluctant to leave as the crowd are, but all good things must come to an end, curfews observed, rules obeyed – especially in a place like this. Is it too early to call the gig of the year?

 

 

 

Category: Live Reviews, Photo Galleries