Boo-Boo Album Of The Week: Primal Scream, ‘Give Out But Don’t Give Up’

Primal Scream are a consistently inconsistent band. They started off as fey indie-pop nancy boys who had an album called Sonic Flower Groove and ended up as snarling PiL wannabes responsible for the staggering XTRMNTR.

And inbetween, their output has been a succession of highs and lows. The highs being Screamadelica and Vanishing Point, the lows being Primal Scream and this week’s Boo-Boo album, Give Out But Don’t Give Up.

Primal Scream’s eponymous second album was a bad album. Leather
trousers bad. But it contained a speck of hope - a ballad called I’m
Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have. DJ Andrew Weatherall fiddled with it
and renamed it Loaded - one of the best singles of all time. This spurred
Primal Scream into making an entire album of Loadeds, 1992’s sublime
Screamadelica. "How on Earth will you follow this?" the world asked.

"By naffing off to Memphis, taking loads of bad drugs and making a rubbish country and western album!" replied Primal Scream.

Give Out But Don’t Give Up is a classic Boo-Boo album because most of
the band disown it today. All except a couple of songs, at least. Rocks
is a pounding slab of rock with faintly ridiculous lyrics which the
band feel obliged to play at all their concerts, and Jailbird is it’s
slightly more sophisticated identical twin.

But the rest of it, for want of a more delicate phrase, sucks. It’s
like drowning in redneck treacle. By starting the album with two
powerful upbeat numbers, to follow it with bland ballad after bland
ballad seems like a terrible mistake.

There’s (I’m Gonna) Cry Myself Blind, Big Jet Plane, Sad And Blue…
for the band that wrote Higher Than The Sun, these songs prove to be
the long, tedious comedown. Then there’s I’ll Be There For You, which
features a melody which the band ripped off note for note for a b-side
on their next album.

Primal Scream tried to vary the pace a little with Funky Jam - featuring
George Clinton, and Struttin’. But both of these songs last for roughly
seven hours each. It’s as if they don’t want to stop, because the
second they do, there’s going to be a rubbish rootin’-tootin’ sad
cowboy lament following right behind it.

As with all Boo-Boo Albums, a lot of the reason Give Out But Don’t
Give Up failed is because of the timing. Primal Scream embraced America
with both arms just as every single other British band decided to make
cockney concept albums based around fruit and veg markets and jellied
eels.

Pre Boo-Boo Album: Primal Scream were riding the zeitgeist of all night rave culture.

Post Boo-Boo Album: After almost falling apart touring the album around
America, Primal Scream got themselves together to make two great albums
and one mediocre one with Kate Moss trouting away as a backing singer.

Get Give Out But Don’t Give Up for as little as £6 at Kelkoo.co.uk

[story by Stuart Heritage]