Concert Reviews

Primal Scream at the Danforth Music Hall

Not ones to tour over in North America very often, Scottish legends Primal Scream made their second visit to Toronto in 18 months last night at the Danforth Music Hall.

Touring behind their latest album, Chaosmosis, released earlier this year, Bobby Gillespie looked in fine form despite breaking his back earlier this summer the result of a stage fall.

Opening with “Movin’ On Up” Gillespie blessed the crowd with over 90 minutes with the focus of the set centering around the new album and their two landmark albums, 1991’s Screamadelica and 2000’s XTRMNTR.

Presentation was Primal Scream’s version of unplugged – only the 5 of them graced the stage, just like their last visit, and aside from the house lights, no visuals other than Gillespie’s clapping and dancing, a hypnotic sight in itself.

Sound wise, the first few songs were abysmal, resulting in “Accelerator” losing all its punch and Chaosmosis single “When The Light Gets In” sounding like a mess. As a fan of the band since Screamadelica and having seem the virtually every time they have hit town, the sound issues were horrifying as the Scream have always delivered incredible sounding gigs.

Once the sound was sorted, they filled the room nicely with their dance-punk or whatever combo of rock and hip-shaking groove you want to call it, but especially on “Shoot Speed Kill Light” and “Swastika Eyes” the extra guitars were missed resulting in an effect less than devastating, the usual effect of the Scream live. That is to say it was bad, it wasn’t. But if you’ve seen the aforementioned songs with three guitars, let alone two, you know the primal rush was missing.

Still Gillespie was the most animated I’ve ever seen him and was particularly chatty, goading the audience to dance or fight and most responded with the former.

The Scream closed their set out with rock stormers “Country Girl” and the closest they ever had to a North American hit “Rocks” before returning for a run through “Kill All Hippies” and a rousing “Come Together” that saw the crowd fail at closing the night out with a sing-along, opting for a roar of approval for getting the weekend starting on the right note.

About author

Concert reviewer at Live in Limbo.