The last time the 'Scream shrieked Brixton to its faux-grotty core, the Academy shuddered in cold-sweated shakes and tonight is distinctly comparable. Granted, the almighty aim of being free to do what we wanna do, to get Loaded is somewhat easier when pints cost significantly less than whatever fee it is a certain mobile phone network are levying contemporarily (hats here tipped to Tiger and the stately old timer that is, or indeed was Jack Daniels). Although for a setlist allegedly harvested from the illustrious back catalogue by tonight's baying, most certainly swaying throng, well, it all sounds a lot like the Screamadelica shows we've all already gorged on this year like truffle pigs sniffing and snorting hallucinogenic fungus. If the power really were in our hands we obviously wanted to dotingly hug the '91 LP once again to incoherently affirm just how we adore it so.
They open with Movin' On Up which again, inevitably, sounds like the most glorious of river-based baptisms, before swaggering through Slip Inside This House and Don't Fight It, Feel It with dilated pupil aplomb. Electric Brixton was once The Fridge, and sheets of dilapidated awning still dangle from a neighbouring shopfront. However in this cinema-turned-hedonic haven, the Cannell-centric visuals thrive, swirling and whirring like the view of a rum-drunk seafarer mistaking the most vibrant kaleidoscope for a murky spyglass. Then from the fervently ridiculous to the divinely sublime the balladeering Damaged follows, Gillespie gaping, shimmying and gasping from within a shirt that looks overwhelmingly extraterrestrial, like a space blanket appreciably shrunk in the wash. Both Swastika Eyes and Accelerator provide erosive while engaging breaks from the well-established flow of the Screamadelica show, the former tarted up with brittle guitars and irrepressible distortion. We're then buckled in as all Heaven breaks loose on the devotional brace of Loaded and Come Together and although such a run has become predictable to the point of becoming formulaic, it's the sort of formula that chemical engineers would contentedly science and slave over for aeons.
They nigh on needlessly return for the customary encore of Country Girl, Jailbird and Rocks, and as said track comes to a splintering close, we bid adieu to Mani as he stumbles off to reconvene with The Stone Roses. On this evidence, we'd best bid him all the fortune of Lady Luck's current fling too as the Madchester pioneers look as though they'll need it to better a band in such rosy form. One of moments past both recent and ancient, Primal Scream really are worth relishing eternally and look as though they'll be kicking about for as long as the jeans they're tonight inadvertently merchandising. Nonetheless, they're a band best celebrated in the here and now so best enjoy the show. And when this loaded, it'll assuredly be so.
