437. Primal Scream, "Screamadelica"

 


This album will always be indelibly connected to the UK rave-and-ecstasy scene of the early '90s, but let me blow your mind with a theory I just came up with whilst listening to this album yesterday for the first time in since the early '90s: not only is this a document of that scene, it also mimics an ecstasy trip itself.

Bear with me.  So it starts with the sunny and blithely optimistic "Movin' On Up," the come-up, as it were, before moving into the real meat of the album, the hardcore part of the trip.  The next two songs, "Slip Inside This House" and "Don't Fight It, Feel It," are both trippy dance tracks of exactly the type you'd associate with a severe MDMA dance event.  Then after that you'll need some water and a rest so "Higher Than the Sun" (wink wink) and "Inner Flight" playing in the chill room.  You get back to dancing with the gently vibey but still danceable "Come Together" and "Loaded."  Then you start to think about things, really think about things, on "Damaged," and come down with, of course, "I'm Comin' Down" and then "Shine Like Stars" is literally lying on your back in the grass looking up in the sky.  Time to get 3 am breakfast.  

OK maybe not.  But whether or not it's literally a trip, this album is still a trip.  Such a perfect time capsule of the time and place.  Also, I was relieved to find that I'm not the first person to think that the U.S. single, "Movin' On Up," is just the ecstasy version of Stephen Stills' "Love the One You're With."  Don't put them next to each other on a mix tape.

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