Primal Scream

They've gone to drug hell and survived, released one of the best albums ever (Screamadelica) and continue to innovate rock music with each new record they make. On Evil Heat, their seventh album, Primal Scream offers up a smorgasbord of fantastic noise, creating what the band feels is the sound of "electronic garage band future rock & roll". Bobby Gillespie and co. cover everything from Neu!-style, motorik Krautrock ("Autobahn 66"), heart-pounding electro-punk ("Miss Lucifer") and snarling garage rock ("City," their collaboration with David Holmes). What isn't on here is the song that was considered too dangerous to include in its original form. "Bomb The Pentagon," an anti-Bush government protest song, written before 9/11, was refused by Sony (for obvious reasons) and rewritten to include on the album. Now called "Rise," the song is still an angry, riot-inducing anthem, and if it lost any of its steam, it's hardly noticeable. The most surprising moment of all, however, isn't the fact that the band caved into record company pressure or that Robert Plant plays harmonica on "The Lord Is My Shotgun." Instead, it is the duet between Gillespie and supermodel Kate Moss that stirs up the most thrills. A cover of the Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra classic "Some Velvet Morning," the song is doused in electronic psychedelia, and shockingly, Moss's voice is as great as the Nancy to Gillespie's devilish Lee. Give the band some credit, Primal Scream sure knows how to raise their game with each record, and Evil Heat is a prime example of that.