Armed with their best critically-received album in years, Primal Scream will make their return to an Irish state when they headline the second night of Forbidden Fruit in Kilmainham this weekend. More Light. the band's 10th album coming in their 31st year as a band, finds the band are their most contemplative. After years spent in the fast line, are Primal Scream mellowing in their middle-age? John Balfe spoke to the band's guitarist Andrew Innes to find out more.


Do you know much about the Forbidden Fruit?

Everyone said it was great last year. We were over doing telly the other week and people were just going on about how good the festival was.

I believe the site in Kilmainham is one of Leonard Cohen's favourite places to play in the world.

And he's had to play everywhere just to get his money back [editor's note: Cohen's manager embezzled funds from his account for a long period of time]. Never trust your accountant! We had an accountant once as well and suddenly disappeared.

Did he take a large chunk of change with him too?

Aye, aye. He was Suede's accountant as well, then it turned out he wasn't really an accountant but he hadn't told anybody that. If you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, you have to pass some exams but you can actually set up as an accountant without anything. We should have known. We'd see him come out of the nightclubs and I'd be thinking, 'do I want him as my accountant'?!

The response to the new Primal Scream album More Light has been very positive. Do you pay attention to the critical reactions from professional curmudgeons?

It's nice when you get some reviews, rather than getting pasted and told to give up. We're proud of this one, I think we've done a good record so it's nice when people say it's our best since XTRMNTR or Vanishing Point. People have been picking up the things that we thought was good about it as well.

Has your approach to songwriting changed over the years, or has it remained relatively constant?

This time a lot of it was started by David Byrne. We went over to his house in Belfast, he's got a massive record collection and he'd pull out some weird German electronic record from the 50's and try to get that atmosphere. He works in films, so he was trying to get more atmosphere than an actual song. The song didn't necessarily have to be verse/chorus/verse/chorus, we deliberately made this one have all sorts going on.

Creatively speaking, Primal Scream have ticked a lot of different boxes over the years. Does the evolution of sounds reflect the personals tastes of the band over time?

We kinda get bored if we do the same thing. It's interesting though, bands like The Ramones you just love them for being The Ramones. You do get influenced by a wide range of music and I guess it comes out of us. It's exciting for us to try not to do what we've done before. There are a lot of acoustic guitars on this record, that wouldn't have happened before because we had a ban on them! If it seems that we haven't sounded like this before, I'd take that as a positive.

As a huge fan of Robert Plant, I'd love to know a little bit more about how he became involved with 'Elimination Blues'?

Bob met him in a cafe near our studio. They were just chatting. Robert was asking how we were all were, and Bob told him we were finishing off the LP. There was one song that we wanted high vocals on the track. We tried girls but it just sounded a bit wrong, it didn't work. Robert then said that if we needed any help finishing the LP that he's in London [for a couple of days] and the lightbulbs came on above our heads...Robert Plant can sign in a high voice! At that point you become a fan again. If my 15-year-old self could have seen it, he would have exploded!

A lot of people probably ask you how have Primal Scream changed over the years but I'm more curious to hear about how much your audience has changed. Now you're playing to people who weren't even born when Screamadelica was released.

That was the weird thing when we did the Screamdelica tour [a few years ago]. It makes all those 'Classic Albums' lists so you get a lot of young people coming to see what all the fuss was about. We were on Jools Holland and the girls from HAIM, particularly the younger sisters who's 19, loved Screamadelica. The other thing about watching the audience change is that if I don't have my glasses I can't really see!

Screamadelica was such a massive success when it came out that you were almost obligated to include those songs in setlists for years afterwards?

We had a 'year zero' in around 1998 if you look at our setlists. I don't think we played anything that anybody liked for a while. We had had enough of the older songs and just wanted to play stuff from XTRMNTR, Vanishing Point and so forth. I can remember I just refused to play 'Loaded' just because I was sick of it. So those songs have had their rest and it's quite nice to get them back out again. I think we play them a lot better because we hadn't played them for ages.

What's the Primal Scream setlist like these days?

A bit of everything. It's quite good now because we have such a wealth of songs. We used to struggle to have enough to play live. It's fine now though!

 

Catch Primal Scream this Sunday at Forbidden Fruit!