Primal Scream – Chaosmosis Review

History has not been kind to the most recent Primal Scream release. Chaosmosis may be set for further pushbacks with upcoming album Come Ahead, but it is high time we remember it for the messy chaos, the welcome madness, that it is. Chaosmosis dared to dream. It thought HAIM and Sky Ferreira would be amicable collaborators with a band whose best work called for the conclusion of society as we know it. Whether they were right or wrong on XTRMNTR is not the point, what Chaosmosis tells us is that the wilder side of life is here to stick around and we should ride the waves of the carnage. Genre eludes Primal Scream. They remain unclassed by the expectations of synth or rock and instead make these loud, Madchester-like beats. Some work better than others. Repetition is the key to this album – it always has been the key for Primal Scream.  

Songs like Trippin’ on Your Love try and recapture the Movin’ on Up shockwaves. Those joys of repetition are long behind the band and though HAIM is an ideal addition to the track, it does very little. Primal Scream was never in need of a pop sound because its style exceeded the need to chase genre. Or at least, it did in their prime. The likes of XTRMNTR lead the charge. Chaosmosis has fallen well behind and chases what could be of appealing quality. It makes for a flatlining, uninteresting piece of work. All the right instrumental spots are hit, strokes of real passion from Bobby Gillespie are heard but none of it feels as though it is roaring with the passion of counter-culture Primal Scream are so often tied to. Instead, it feels like a chase of the popular genre notions, and a failure at that. I Can Change hears the band plead with a listener to let them in, they can be anything we want them to be.  

But a band with the image of anything we want them to be is doomed to fail. Generic emotional lines are played out with a vagueness fitting of a band without a style of their choice. 100% or Nothing is the sort of poptimism which lingers as inspiring on the surface, but shallow in its meaning. But this comes after a blistering series of highs. The wheels were bound to come off in some way, but in such undramatic fashion as this is deflating. Muddled passions are still passions. There is heart within Chaosmosis, it is just misplaced and mangled in the inconsistencies of its sound. From the string-laden brutality of the maudlin-like Private Wars to the strangled pop chancers on synth-like Where the Light Gets In, inconsistencies are the real problem. 

Erratic pacing and a lack of image hinder Primal Scream on this release. No sense in the direction they take, no charm in the resulting songs. They struggle to make sense of what they want to get out of a synthpop, chart-tipped album. Gillespie has some exceptional lyrics in store for listeners who can wade through the bright and sickly pop waters but it is a tough task. Pieces like Golden Rope are worth sticking around for but their misguided attempts at breaching the pop fundamentals of the mid-2010s are the defining centrepiece of this album. A shame to waste strong lyrics and swinging saxophone solos on an album like this but Primal Scream has always shifted with the times. It is what makes them so erratic yet exciting to listen to. Their misfires are at least interesting – and Chaosmosis is full of those.  

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