Another Saturday night in Brixton.....What do you expect?

Because when you go out, on a Saturday night, to see your favourite band, you know what you want. Especially on the back of last years Greatest Hits album, you could be forgiven for thinking that tonight is going to be a gonzoid-ampetamine-filth-overdose of frantic hits and a smattering of the new stuff.

No such luck. For tonight, long after Spiritualised have battered our eyes and Nick Cave has broken our hearts, Primal Scream are frankly, boring. In one respect, with their singular, determined vision, they bore their way through us and leave us empty, hollow, in another, they simply bore with their unwavering, near-fanatical didactism.

In the attire of pimps (all black shirts, and porkpie hats), they’ve never looked less like Primal Scream. In fact, they simply look a bit ridiculous. Now. I know, I know. It’s not about what they look like : that’s for Kylie Minogue. It’s all about what it sounds like. But it doesn’t look good here. And they’ve never sounded less like Primal Scream. After ditching their semi-retro stylings of Screamadelica and Give Out But Don’t Give Up in the mid 90’s, the past decade has seen them head firmly off into the leftfield.

On paper (or by pixel), it would sound great : fiercely political lyrics, dirty, fuzzy bass that rumbles like an earthquake, a wall of guitars that sound less like a pop group than Suicide and Slayer arguing at a Alec Empire gig. But in practice? Primal Scream are all edge and abrasion : there’s no light or shade, just dark and dark. Of course, it’s not all bad – “Burning Wheel”, “Kill All Hippies”, “Miss Lucifer”, “xtmntr” and the fabulous “Swastika Eyes” are all executed with aplomb, but also serve to highlight the weakness of the Scream in 2004 : it’s a one-dimensional wall of noise shorn of melody and greatness. Their set becomes a monotone sludge of dirty techno-rock. 

Starved of hits, when a relative flop such as “Accelerator” (no.63 with a bang) or “Autobahn 66” appears, from nowhere, an influx of fat, old, bald bastards barge past us, spilling pints, fags, and halitosis as if they were the Four Drinkers of The 2Pacalypse.

Sorry. Actions speak louder than words, and they’re saying : Have another elbow, cunt. They holler at yer. And they always seem to stand in packs near the girls : and Primal Scream have more female fans than almost any other band I’ve come across. It’s so monotonous, I forget that Kevin Shields, wonderkid behind My Bloody Valentine, and the scupltor of the “Lost In Translation” soundtrack is standing right in front of me.

In the meantime, there is plenty else to be getting on with, plenty more to dazzle. The sight of Kate Moss and Jude Law stage right jumping up and down like teenagers. (Though Jude stops after a while, and cups in his hands a fag, which he lights in an unconscious imitation of Michael Caine). The wonderful sight of the roadies headbanging, yelling out the words to every song, and having a whale of a time. And sometimes, they aren’t the only ones : but for every hit, there’s a couple of old songs, and a soundalike new song. (The new songs offer nothing new : just more of the same).

There’s more to life than this, of course. Lot’s more. Rewind half-an-hour, rewind past Andrew Weatherall’s DJ set (consisting of songs from The Clash’s record collection), and past Spiritualised set, past the lacklustre Massive Attack DJ set, and we get Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. Albeit it’s a shorter, slimmer Bad Seeds than normal, with Cave backed by a bassist, drummer, and viola-player (who recreates, VU-style, the vast swathes of guitar on a single instrument), but it’s still Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, conjuring up a dark, misty world of vice and seduction. Their brief set, made of Cave’s distinctive torch songs, see the new stuff (“Easy Mama”) slot in effortlessly alongside such classics as “The Weeping Song” and “Hallelujah” in such a fashion as to make you simultaneously curse Cave’s prolific muse and praise.There’s too many good songs sometimes. Often, not enough. And from the wrong places. The Australian Dark Prince meanwhile, is a torch-song singer from Hell, Vegas, inhabiting the dark underbelly of our dreams in the half-shadow of 4am.

If David Lynch were a singer, he’d be Nick Cave.

There’s also an acoustic set from The Beta Band as we enter the then-cavernous Brixton Academy : to a sparse room of maybe 200, the soon-to-split Scots excavate their songs in a naked fashion to general apathy. They’ve neither good nor bad, though. They’re just there, doggedly holding on in the death throes of good causes and contractual obligation.

Neither least or last, Spiritualised, who pummel us into some kind of brainwracked apathetic acceptance. Spiritualised are a tidal wave of sound flooding our souls. From the opening, undulating “Jesus”, which effortlessly towers from humble beginnings, to the final, quarter-hour, epilepsy-inducing “How Does It Feel?”, Spiritualised captivate. Though not always in a good way : they’re relentlessly insular, Jason Pierce, their guiding light, huddles on a chair facing away from most of the audience, the rest of his anonymous band seemingly spiriting laser guided melodies out of thin air,  and the songs, the beautiful “Let It All Come Down”, the simple, innocently childlike “I Think I’m Love”, unfold like flowers before wilting in front of our eyes. The high point meanwhile is “Come Together”, the Bowie-Rock-N-Roll-Suicide-clone that manages to definitively enscapulate all that is good and bad about music all at once, invoking the sense of paranoia, beauty, and wonder at life, or whatever it is. The end meanwhile, is a quarter-hour excavation of “How Does It Feel?”, the final death throes of rock, the spirit of MBV reincarnated in a squawl of feedback and epilepsy inducing, torturous light. It’s as this point, when you think you can’t take anymore, and yet, you must, that you realise that this is not Chinese Water Torture, but something altogether even worse.

Around me, 4,000 people stand, buffeted by sound, their eyes closed in relenting submission, transcending their circumstances (though maybe not necessarily through choice, but in escape). And what is music, but an attempt to transcend and leave behind, and escape, and alter the circumstances of our lives? Sometimes music is the bosom we cling to, sometimes the thing we run from. Spiritualised meanwhile, confound, and ask the eternal question : would you run to me if someone hurt you even if the someone that hurt you was me?

And there probably isn’t an answer. Sometimes the wise don’t know the answers : only the right questions.

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