Music

Primal Scream|Kasabian

Riot City Blues (Columbia)
Empire(RCA)

By Annie Zaleski 

Even when Primal Scream didn't match the creative heights reached by Screamadelica's rave-worthy blissouts or the electro-punk of XTRMNTR, they never lacked self-confidence. After all, they coaxed (and kept) My Bloody Valentine's reclusive Kevin Shields out of hibernation and had the courage to embrace sinewy dark-wave long before it was hip again. But it's taken the U.K. band nearly two decades to produce an album as strident as Riot City Blues — i.e., its first album of guitar-centric rock that doesn't sound tentative or tired.

Blues sounds like the result of an all-night whiskey bender spent listening to the Stones and Faces, a disc full of loosey-goosey blues jams jumpy with harmonica and shambling guitars. Lead-off track "Country Girl" marches forward with propulsive riffs and twitterpated mandolin, stomping highlight "Nitty Gritty" shakes its moneymaker for all it's worth, and the barnstorming bounce "We're Gonna Boogie" is just what it sounds like. Tellingly, though, the album's centerpieces are "Little Death" — a woozy, six-minute tune that's reminiscent of the spooky death rattles found on Primal Scream's 1997 disc Vanishing Point — and "Dolls (Sweet Rock and Roll)," a glammy number closer in spirit to the Velvet Underground (mainly because of Bobby Gillespie's Lou Reed-like speak-sing delivery). Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with each album, the Scream are becoming better at smudging their influences together as they age; the proof is in the enjoyable, irresistible Blues.

No one would ever accuse Kasabian of trying to invent anything; their 2004 debut more often than not sounded like XTRMNTR: The Sequel (albeit as imagined by the Stone Roses). The excellent, dancefloor-friendly Empire contains much of the same bombast and electro-swagger — check the squalling guitars that finish "Shoot the Runner" or vocalist Tom Meighan's anguished sneer throughout — that should be familiar to even casual Primal Scream fans. But Kasabian is best enjoyed when considered separate from its obvious influences; only then can one truly delve into and appreciate "Me Plus One" — a trippy synth-stomp that's somewhat like the Happy Mondays without the lazy-itis — or "Sun/Rise/Light/Flies," a soaring, string-laden anthem that splits the difference between the Chemical Brothers and Oasis.