Product Description

'Riot City Blues' is Primal Scream's follow-up album to theelectro-tinged 'Evil Heat', although it could easily be compared in style and content to their 1994 masterpiece 'Give Out But Don't Give In'. Bluesy, punky swagger and New York Dolls-esque melodies abound, marking this album out as a more organic affair than Bobby Gillespie & Co's previous two albums. Includes the single 'Country Girl'.

Track Listing

1. Country Girl
2. Nitty Gritty
3. Suicide Sally And Johnny Guitar
4. When The Bomb Drops
5. Little Death
6. 99th Floor
7. We're Gonna Boogie
8. Dolls (Sweet Rock 'n' Roll)
9. Hell's Comin' Down
10. Sometimes I Feel So Lonely

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12367 in Music
• Released on: 2006-06-05
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
First listen, Riot City Blues--the ninth album from genre-mashing Scottish rock hedonists Primal Scream--feels like a conscious shift away from the politicised punk futurism that's guided their output since "Swastika Eyes", harking back instead to the Southern-fried blues-rock that inspired their ill-received 1994 album Give Out But Don't Give Up. No question, "Boogie Disease" and "Nitty Gritty" have fairly myopic horizons, beyond a desire to make what frontman Bobby Gillespie hails "that sweet, sweet, sweet rock'n'roll". Riot City, however, seldom sinks to the narcotic lulls that characterised their last foray into the Memphis swamps. Accompanied by haywire mandolin, "Country Girl" bounces along at a tempo that somehow reminds both of four-to-the-floor techno, and The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)". Kevin Shields, the eccentric guitar genius that helped shape the last two Scream records, is gone, but new special guests include Will Sergeant of Echo And The Bunnymen and The Kills' Alison Mosshart (who contributes a great guest verse to "Dolls (Come On Baby Let's Have A Good Time)". Meanwhile, "Sometimes I Feel So Lonely" is a blissful gospel hymn to anarchy ("Everything's permitted/Nothing's really true") in the vein of past Scream landmark "Star". Pastiche, but fun with it.--Louis Pattison

Customer Reviews

Grand Theft Audio?
Every once in a while, Primal Scream perform their Grand Theft Audio. Which is that they rubbish anything they've done before, steal some old Rolling Stones albums, and try to copy them. Call it a reinvention, call it what you want. But the idea of some scrawny politicised rock warrior, or whatever he's known as, deciding he just wants to go Good Time Boogie just seems to me to be a backwards step.

Why, when you have all sonic armoury and intelligence to rely on, you want to deconmstruct, to simplify, to stupidify? "Go back to your mama, she'll take care of you", Gillespe advises on lead single `Country Girl', which sounds oddly like 1972 at Mick Jaggers House. And that advise he has surely taken - returning to the old template of 1994, and producing an album of feelgood, straightforward, literal - and boring - rock. Sure, it'll sound great driving down LA Freeways with the top down in the summer. But how many of us live in LA? Is this kind of escapism what we want now?

Fiddle whilst Rome burns, Bobby G. Reality plays second fiddle to Boogie Nitty Gritty with Suicide Sally and Johnny Guitar. If I wanted to hear music like this, I'd go straight to the source, crack out my old Rolling Stones CD's, and try and get satisfaction there. Instead of this, a nostalgic, retrospective hankering for a world that doesn't - and never did - exist, some kind of Imaginary Other World (like Morrissey's Imaginary England), where everything is cured by guitars. Aside from the pointed, anti-Doherty protest of "Suicide Sally And Johnny Guitar", lyrically this album is mediocre, musically tedious and fired on enthusiasm over artists expression.

Move along. Nothing to see, nothing to see.

This album rocks...
Primal Scream seem to be back on form with 'Riot City Blues', which echoes their 'Give Out But Don't Give Up' days, with superb guest appearances from Wil Sergeant and Warren Ellis. This album rocks!!

Primal Scream
Allright not all the songs on this album are brilliant but its one of the best albums released of this decade and it is definately Primal Screams album.Very blues and country influenced,well worth buying.