ALBUM REVIEW: The Primitives – Bloom! The Full Story 1985-92 (Cherry Red Records)
During the mid-late 1980s, few bands navigated the transition from indie darlings to mainstream hit-makers as slickly and successfully as The Primitives.
Armed with a pocketful of sub-three-minute, hook-laden songs, the Coventry band rose from obscurity into the upper reaches of the national charts.
Guitarist Paul Court was the man behind most of the hits, but it was glamorous blonde singer Tracy Tracy – the Debbie Harry of her generation – who grabbed the magazine covers.
Bloom! is a comprehensive 5CD set produced in conjunction with the band, which captures every period of a career which spanned seven years in its first incarnation.
The first disc gathers their earliest demos, plus the singles and EPs which they released on their own Lazy Records imprint.
Early demos of songs like Crash and Spacehead owed more to the lo-fi ethic of The Jesus And Mary Chain than the slick indie-pop they’d become better known for.
Really Stupid and Nothing Left featured the same scuzzy guitar sound, bobbling bass and tinny drums, but with Tracy’s vocals higher in the mix, with someone obviously latching on to the band’s USP of the time.
Critics said their songs all sounded the same; they obviously didn’t hear the punky riffs of She Don’t Need You, the surf-pop of Buzz Buzz Buzz, and the Indian-flavoured Shadow, which showed they were much more than one-trick ponies.
They began recording for a debut album, which was shelved when they parted company with their drummer. Those versions are tagged onto the end of disc one to show the progression the band was making.
Stop Killing Me gave them their first taste of the charts, reaching No 78, but they hit paydirt in February 1988 with the new, improved version of Crash going to No 5 in the charts, and becoming an international hit.
Disc two is based around debut album Lovely, which eventually came out in April 1988, and peaked at No 6 in the UK charts. It kicks off with Crash, and also includes the singles Ocean Blue, Thru The Flowers and Out Of Reach.
Half the 14 tracks are familiar, having already been released in various guises, but they sound much more polished, with much of the scuzz and fuzz of earlier recordings gone. The disc is expanded to 22 tracks with the inclusion of tracks from the Crash and Out Of Reach singles
Disc three is the band’s second album, Pure, released in October 1989, plus the singles Way Behind Me, Sick Of It and Secrets. It’s a curious mixture of psychedlic-pop and jangly indie, and includes a nod to their influences with a cover of the Velvet Underground song I’ll be Your Mirror. The main interest here for long-time fans is the two previously unreleased tracks, two 12in versions of Secrets, and their spirited version of the rock ‘n’ roll standard You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care), from a 1990 NME compilation.
By April 1992’s third album Galore, the writing was on the wall for The Primitives. It’s not a bad record by any stretch, but the band’s jangly indie was being submerged by emergent shoegaze and Madchester bands, and it failed to chart, which spelled the end for the band. The original 12 tracks are bolstered to 21 by the inclusion of B-sides, the Spells EP, and two more unreleased songs, which makes up disc four.
The final CD in this set brings together a whole bunch of radio sessions recorded for Janice Long, Andy Kershaw and John Peel, in the heady days of 1986-87, plus 11 tracks recorded at Bath Moles, which showed the band could certainly cut it live.
For long-time fans who own most of these tracks, this is a chance to replace much-loved vinyl, though the inevitable repetition of some songs will probably prove too much for the more casual listener.
As a comprehensive document of one of the brightest bands of the indie era it’s essential. The Primitives reformed in 2009, and have released two critically acclaimed albums since. They’re also still treading the boards live, but if you want to know where it all began, this is a good place to start. 7/10.
