Massive Attacks "Blue Lines" Vs. Primal Screams "Screamadelica"

Screamadelica has "Movin' On Up", "Don't Fight, Feel It", "Come Together", "Loaded" and "Damaged".

So?

Mr. Scrub,

I tend to agree, but Be Thankful For What You've Got" is FAAAAR worse.

http://www.alfred.edu/summer/Students-%20Coffee%20House%20lr.jpg

vs.

http://www.antagovision.com/ignitepics/103102halloween/images/image010.jpg

On the other hand, Blue Lines is, for me, one of the five greatest albums of all time and I love it unreservedly and can never hear it enough.

(This is helped by seeing them live a few times, and one of the performances of "Loaded" would be among my favourite live performances ever.)

My girl at the time of this album just broke up with me. She went to this show with her new guy, they play this song and lost I lost it. One of the most intense feelings at a live show I have ever felt.

No, that's me too. Hence, Screamadelica wins.

Foxbase Alpha is better than both of them though!

Plus it's their best album, while Massive Attack got way better on "Protection".

Primal Scream started strong, fell off big, came storming back, and have since levelled out- most would say they're treading water at the moment, at best. That said, one of the reasons for this erratic career is that they've constantly updated their sound and taken risks, sometimes with success, and sometimes with failure.

Massive Attack started strong, stayed that way, but never really came up with anything new. They're like Underworld- all you can expect from them at this point is more of the same. Most would say they're on their way out, or already over.

Massive Attack has a greater success ratio, but I go with Primal Scream for having the bigger nuts. oops- guess I decided!

Ha! Ronan summed up my rant in a sentence...

Martin, I never thought you'd be able to shock me ever again but somehow you've managed it.

Apparantly Primal Scream have finished their new album - they wrote and recorded it in three weeks with Youth producing.

I love both of these albums, toughie to choose really. I guess i gotta go with the scream though in the end.

blue lines is great. shara nelson has an amazing voice. it's got 'unfinished sympathy' and 'safe from harm' on it.
screamadelica is shit. bobby gillespie has never hit a note in his life. i do like some primal scream songs, but none from this album.

some people in this thread have shocked me.

S/Delica has a few decent musical ideas (Higher Than The Sun is tolerable), but they're not Gillespie's, nor Innes or Young's. It's 90% piffle.

and?

well, yeah. but fortunately he's hardly on any of 'screamadelica'.

and nothing.

I remember being vaguely impressed by the underwater sounds of "Higher Than The Sun" when it came out, but the rest of Screamadelica is sequencer chaff, rockworm pastiche (a rockworm is a bookworm who knows a lot about rock), drug references... I'm completely astonished that it's done so well in critics' polls. I suspect they associate it with their e-popping days of glory.

"Daydreaming" and "Unfinished Sympathy", on the other hand, were absolutely determinant: this was going to be the sound of the 90s. The video for "Daydreaming" blew me away, and "Unfinished Sympathy" just has this emotional tug. I suspect the presence of real black people has something to do with it. You know, Primal Scream's Andrew Innes is competent, and Weatherall pulled some nice production tricks out of his palace of swords, but was there a talent like Tricky in Primal Scream?

is this in the same way that 'biology' has a house section?

-- The Lex (alex.macpherso...), January 10th, 2006.

yeah, sort of. over 20-odd years, house has encompassed a fair few styles and textures. mid-section of 'biology' is as 'house' as it is 'electropop'.

yes, it makes you dance round the room singing 'i love indie'.

You can probably tell that I'm not the world's biggest Primals fan, but I actually think "Vanishing Point" is a good album. And underrated, compared with the adulation "Screamadelica" gets. Fashion is fickle.

the key word may be 'Balearic' as this was applied to anything that fitted ideas of House but with a significantly slower tempo (in this case some 15-20bpm slower?) - see also Mental Generation's 'Cafe Del Mar', Movement 98 (early Oakenfold & Osbourne project) 'Joy And Heartbreak', The Grid's 'Flotation' and a whole bunch of other tracks from that time.

they were hip in indie-dance circles -- mondays, roses, soup dragons.

xpost -- i love those tracks! they are balearic house. so still house.

Tom Scott & the LA Express: (Ode 1974)
* "Sneakin' in the Back" (Drums)
Massive Attack - "Blue Lines"

anyway, to business. "screamadelica" all the way. i know it's a drug-addled mess made by saucer-eyed mooks, but it still somehow sounds vibrant and exciting and i associate it with getting ready to go out and have FUN. "blue lines", on the other hand, i associate with dank student flats in edinburgh, smoking shit joints and wondering if someone, somewhere, was having a better time.

simple reasons, but they seal it for me.

I find it hard to hold onto antipathy towards albums these days though. Don't fight it feel it, the big wheel keeps on turning anyways man.

probablt because both were held up (in the uk anyway) as 'the best albums ever' (kind of) in the mid-nineties, and 'blue lines' was especially seen as a benchmark, genre-inventing record. there's more at stake than the tunes.

A cheap analogy is for the following albums, Massive Attack twiddled some knobs, and Bobbie Gillespie, in one of his more important actions at the time, fecked the guitar into the amp and walked away. Except of course it'd be more like "fished the guitar out of the amp and checked the tuning". And I have no idea if this was even his doing, maybe they were all on for doing Screamadelica II but Weatherall couldn't be arsed.

As regards the records, Dan's more or less on the money. Blue Lines is fucking quality throughout, but you have to choke down so much shit to get to the good stuff in Screamadelica.

i'm not sure where the 'so much shit' is on 'screamadelica'. 'damaged' is the only totally shit track i can think of, and that's no worse than 'hymn of the big wheel'.

scan / type the LOADED bit from 1990 in here will u please?

i'd do it but i'm in werk.

the single mix is, but the album version is classic. as is 'loaded'.

Er, have you forgotten what the singing on them sounds like (ignoring that they are both inferior retreads of "Loaded")?

The Farley & Heller remix of 'Loaded' might be better than the original mix(es).

Primal Scream had to be pop stars because of a homosocial pact between Alan McGee and Bobby Gillespie. But the terrible irony was the fact that the record which finally achieved this didn't contain Bobby. The price of Bobby's stardom was mixing Bobby right off his own record! What's more, "Loaded" doesn't even sound like the group Primal Scream, as they then conceived themselves. It's a few elements selected and slowed down by Weatherall from "I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have", a much more conservative rocking number off their previous album. Having achieved brand recognition with "Loaded", it was imperative, for the band's dignity and for the homosocial pact, that the Scream "be themselves" again. It wasn't enough that people should know the name Primal Scream, they had to like Primal Scream as they really were, ie rock traditionalists who liked bluesy punky guitar rock, and had a skinny narcissistic singer whose every second lyric was about how "stars" "shine" when they take enough drugs. So, after "Screamadelica" (despite the title the least Screamadelic thing they'd ever released), the samples and dubby space were out and in their stead was plaintive, off-key Bobby again, and rawk guitars again, and rehashed Stones licks. But alas the British public met "Give Out But Don't Give Up" with indifference. And The Scream were sidelined on their own label by Oasis (Noel once memorably dismissed the Scream's music as "artsy fartsy disco").

also, I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have >>>>>>>>>Loaded.

However, Blue Lines is pretty dire. I went back recently to relisten, and "Unfinished Sympathy" is just annyoing. It may be due to overplay, but I think it just simply hasn't held up well. "Be Thankful" is still a nice cover, but has nothing on the original. "Blue Lines" and "Five Man Army" are still nice, but I prefer the similar-styled tracks on Protection a lot better. "Safe From Harm" is still a terrific track, probably my pick from the album. I liked this record a lot more before I'd had my "education"/immersion in dub a few years ago.

All in all my pick is Screamadelica, but neither is a perfect album as many in this thread have argued. I'd second Fox Base Alpha as a far superior pick for "the sound of '91"

And lastly, temper all this with the fact that I *love,love,love" Candyflip's Madstock and would probably choose that and the St Et record over either of the ones in this TS

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dre400/e402/e40246l1e9h.jpg

1991 was one of those years where (for whatever reason) certain albums really stuck in my head. probably because it was the same era as my first experiences with e and the like. i was 16-17 that year. turning point and all that

"Kiss me, won’t you won’t you kiss me
Won’t you won’t you kiss me
Lift me right out of this world
Trip me, won’t you won’t you trip me
Won’t you won’t you trip me
Lift me ride me to the stars

I’m free you’re free
I want you to touch me
Come touch me
Now it’s all too much
All too much
All too much"

MASSIVE ATTACK WINS YAY!