TS: Primal Scream vs The Jesus & Mary Chain

screamadelica is certainly their best known & most-acclaimed but xtrmntr is their best work. i never hear anyone say they've done anything worthwhile anything except those two and vanishing point.

Evil Heat is imo a decent effort, but the Trinity remains, yeah.

XTRMNTR is one of these albums I remember hearing for the first time

i never hear anyone say they've done anything worthwhile anything except those two and vanishing point

Dixie-Narco EP is croosh if only for Screamadelica (the song)

i never hear anyone say they've done anything worthwhile anything except those two and vanishing point.

Ahem, Velocity Girl??!

(still voting JAMC. there's something a little too try-hard about Bobby Gillespe. Probably because I can't unremember their Stones phase)

I only discovered XTRMNTR last year, it was the sound of 2020 for me, and I'm over 50!

J&MC were all the rage at my college radio station but never clicked for me, despite repeated efforts, outside of some of the early singles.

Taking Sides: trying too hard vs not trying hard enough

But which one is which? 🤔

both have surely been both at various points each

Primal Scream have made maybe 2.5 great albums (all thanks to Wetherall and Shields) and a couple of decades of absolute shit.
Jesus & Mary Chain I don't hate but cannot fathom the appeal of either, nothing has ever grabbed me in their music and I've tried, really I have.
Going to be a reluctant vote for the scream I suppose.

one great record each but one without a history of talking utter shite at every invitation, easy shout

Fans of XTRMNTR, do you not agree that there are a few very decent tracks on Evil Heat?

i think it's safe to attribute a very significant portion of what makes screamadelica great to weatherall but it's nowhere as easy to credit solely their outside collaborators for vanishing point & xtrmntr.

nowhere near as easy

one without a history of talking utter shite at every invitation

Really?

maybe i've missed a lot of Reid brothers blather in the last 30 years idk

For reasons that have little to do with the Reid brothers, here's the best interview JAMC ever gave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY4ZXpsoOUg

listening to automatic and it's strange it was apparently so poorly received at the time, it's basically just darklands but with synth basslines which has the great effect of making them sound even more like new order (never a bad thing)

Fans of XTRMNTR, do you not agree that there are a few very decent tracks on Evil Heat?

Evil Heat is good, a perfectly decent followup/companion piece to XTRMNTR, it's just not in squinting distance of the level of the trinity

"Lord is My Shotgun" is a killer, and Plant on Harmonica!
I remember buying XTRMNTR unheard after loving the Vanishing Point / Echo Dek comeback - I cued it up LOUD and when Kill All Hippies kicked in, it took my head clean off. At the time I thought "this could not possibly be better" and I stand by it.

oops Trump capitalisation of harmonica there

the drum machine/synth bass sound on automatic is killer, whole LP really captures their “i am tuff driving in my motorcar smoking a tuff cigarette” essence - no bad songs. I understand why psychocandy is iconic etc but automatic their best LP for me

saw primal scream in 1992 and it was def a high watermark of live musick for me - also possibly high watermark of good drug experiences - agree with general feelins that xtrmtr and vanishing point have held up better than screamadelica -

agree too with poster upthread that there is in retrospect something a bit uncomfortable about the relationship with gospel/soul/blues in screamadelica era - but also as a white suburban schmuck reading interviews where bobby g waxed lyrical about robert johnson / john coltrane / aretha franklin kind of gave me permission to check out a lot of music that had not previously made inroads into the monocultural shithole where i grew up

anyway i think this is prrrrrobably primal scream for me but it is not an easy pick and neither band feels nearly as vital/crucial than they did back in the day

i never hear anyone say they've done anything worthwhile anything except those two and vanishing point.

I happily make do with everything up to and including Sonic Flower Groove. (also: enochroot OTM.)

Come to think of it, I nowadays only really revisit JAMC up to and including Psychocandy as well, lol.

"Lord is My Shotgun" is a killer, and Plant on Harmonica!
I remember buying XTRMNTR unheard after loving the Vanishing Point / Echo Dek comeback - I cued it up LOUD and when Kill All Hippies kicked in, it took my head clean off. At the time I thought "this could not possibly be better" and I stand by it.

And following up « Kill all hippies » with « Acceleretor » took the noise aggression to another level !

How is this even a question?

I admire Primal Scream's willingness to completely switch up their sound from time to time, and Vanishing Point and XTRMNTR are great records. I've come to appreciate Screamadelica but I don't think it remotely lives up to its reputation as a neo-psych landmark--maybe you had to be there? At any rate my vote goes to JAMC for Psychocandy alone

Xactlee

Which one of these groups had Motley Crue name a song after them, hmm?

I remember enjoying More Light, which I think I only checked out because it got a surprisingly positive reception here. Should probably give Evil Heat a try, don't think i bothered with anything else post-XTRMNTR. Probably voting Primal Scream, JAMC have less dumb bullshit but also fewer tracks that really work for me, i generally just think they're alright.

Whoever pointed out "Screamadelica" track on Dixie Narco was OTM. My favorite of their tracks. I dig the laid back vibe of the Screamadelica era of Primal Scream, though this board persuaded me to check out the later stuff and I'm glad I did.

Still voting JAMC! First two, plus Honey's Dead. Automatic is not quite as great as one would wish (Darklands and Automatic the songs are all too long). Any love for Stoned and Dethroned?

broom air would just like to point out that Ihave been otm on this thread

Yep, love for "Stoned and Dethroned" yep.

yeah it is a great record, haven't listened in years but it comes to mind easily. I guess their most pop moment.

I listen to the JAMC the most in reverse order of release, up to a point. "Psychocandy," rarely. "Darklands," a lot. "Automatic," all the time. "Honey's Dead" and "Stoned and Dethroned" are both great, too, but I never listen to them, possibly because by then I had fully caught up and listened to them tons at the time of release.

Primal Scream, that's a band I just don't get. Even "Screamadelica," to be honest, though I recognize its cultural import/impact.

really tough decision as i love'em both for different reasons.
but cos of the brilliant production/noise/machine clashes throughout Vanishing Point, EchoDek, XTRMNTR, Evil Heat, More Light i am going with PS.
and yes, a lot of why i love PS is down to the collaborators/producers.

I guess with "Munki" and "Damage and Joy" I had gone past the need for them. Munkii had its moments, D&J didn't move me. Bit of a shame, I overenthusiastically bought one of those bundles, I did keep the cassette though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

listening to "Accelerator" this morning, I realised I had no idea what the lyrics in the chorus were - "come on! you've lived too well" I thought maybe. Now, having looked them up, and watched Boaby sing them on the video while I listened carefully, I still can't believe it's "come on, come on, hit the accelerator, the accelerator".

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

This should have been considerably more lop-sided except for an ILX love for a plucky underdog.

i was unreasonably invested in the chain winning this

Genuinely surprised - Boaby is a gobshite idiot most of the time but the good PS albums are light years beyond the good JAMC albums. I have more respect for Jim and Willie but they rarely surprised me the way PS often did.

probably would’ve thrown a JAMC vote due to quality of the quantity of their work vs PS having some legit dreck and Gillespie being Gillespie.

XTRMNTR is still the best thing either put out and was my absolute most listened to thing of 2020.

Boaby is a gobshite idiot most of the time but the good PS albums are light years beyond the good JAMC albums.

otm

You win this round, boomers.

kinda feel that the JAMC's version of "My Girl", tossed off to fill a John Peel session, nails in 3 mins much of what BG has been trying to capture for decades.

Impressed by the turn out : there are more people on ILX now than I thought !

neither is Siouxsie Sioux, but that swastika shit sure didn't age well

They'd dropped all that prior to "Hong Kong Garden" though?

going by that recent interview, Bobby G's brain has actually aged far better than most of his peers'

Mmm, he's grown up a bit.

well tbf he has always instinctively understood that to cut through you must always speak in slogans and quotable bites

Bobby has a book to sell. It'll be The One Show next.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5TZpRHX0AsWI14?format=jpg

I should watch this, Bobby's bound to come out with some mean streets of Glasgow bullshit but, even better, they're surely going to ask him about the football!

i've never been depressed enough to take the final step and watch Sunday Brunch on purpose

Absolutely, never seen so much as a second of it but if it's good enough for Boab...

Bit early in the morning for Bob but, brace yourselves, he's on there to punt a concept album he has coming out about a failing relationship.

Are those celebrities? because I know none of them apart from boaby

You've never heard of dismally unfunny Irish comedienne and habitue of every shitty panel game going, Aisling Bea?

not really a fan of shitty panel shows

Neither am I, believe me.

Bobby was somewhat dry..

Has been for years.

A multitude of new box sets around Screamadelica, an unreleased Weatherall mix of "Shine like stars" amongst some 12" rereleases in a box, etc.

MBV Arkestra (first? also?) came out as a single

ah yeah I was misremembering which remix was on the A-side! (I had the 12") The general point stands tho.

the album version of "come together" is weatherall's mix, which only uses one bit of the backing vocals from the original song (as heard on the single mix), bobby doesn't even appear. that counts as very transformative

however the Come Together single is very very careful about being a double A! - discogs says even the runout groove has the Farley side as A² and Weatherall as A¹´², on both 7" and 12". I don't know if "the original song" as not remixed by anyone has ever been looks like the 20th anniversary box (ten years ago!) renamed the 7" mix to "Terry Farley 7" Mix" and included a "(7" Mix)" that's a five-minute version of the Weatherall mix, sooooo... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯