Nearly 35 years since the release of their 1987 debut, Primal Scream are set to reissue a new version of Sonic Flower Groove. Working on his memoir “Tenement Kid” (White Rabbit) out Oct. 28, Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie started revisiting the album, gaining a new appreciation for the earlier recording, then began reflecting on some things he would change on the record.
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“I wrote a lot about that record and the experience of recording it—we recorded it twice—and our inexperience,” said Gillespie in a recent interview. “I re-listened to the record a lot and had a new respect for it.”
Revealing a few key changes on the album, Gillespie said they will add two new songs, “Black Star Carnival,” a B-side, and a previously unreleased track “Tomorrow Ends Today,” a song that sounds more like a single, and one Gillespie said should have been on the album the first time around.
“I’m going to re-sequence the album and do a new record sleeve,” shared Gillespie. “At that point, everyone had the ’80s drum sound—the Bunnymen, The Smiths, everybody—so, it would be good if we take the ’80s drum sound off it and maybe we could add some harmonies, because when I listen to it now, I think, ‘why didn’t we do harmonies there?’”
Gillespie added, “The first side just runs like a dream—bang, bang, bang, bang. For some reason, we fucked it up.”
Most recently, Gillespie collaborated with Savages Jehnny Beth on Utopian Ashes, out July 2. In his memoir, the singer dives deeper into his earlier life, growing up in Glasgow, pre-Primal Scream, through the band’s 1991 release Screamdelica. The band released their eleventh album Chaosmosis in 2016.
