Riot City Blues

by

Primal Scream

Edit

Riot City Blues is the eighth studio album by Primal Scream, released on June 5, 2006. On this album, Primal Scream leaves its electronic element behind and returns to more traditional rock and roll. The album features Will Sergeant (Echo & the Bunnymen) on "When The Bomb Drops", Warren Ellis (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dirty Three) on "Hell's Coming Down" and Alison Mosshart (The Kills) performing backing vocals.

The album was released to varying reviews. A particularly scathing review by Pitchfork claimed that the album was "...flat and dead. It's as if Primal Scream have run completely out of ideas and so they've reverted to the detestable fallbacks of honking harmonicas and bar-band choogles, acting like college freshmen who just discovered blues." While The Guardian said "...Primal Scream are the kind of band that would probably snap there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure, only good music and bad music. But their eighth album undermines that claim. On the one hand, it is conservatism dressed up as rebellion, derivative, self-parodic and very, very, stupid. On the other, it boasts an energy and a shamelessness that demands you abandon your vast array of reservations. No mean feat." The debut single, "Country Girl", became the band's highest charting in their career, while the album charted at #5 in the UK. "Dolls (Sweet Rock and Roll)" and "Sometimes I Feel So Lonely" where also released as singles in 2006. The number of weeks they spent on the UK albums chart with this album, and number of weeks on the UK singles chart with the singles from it, helped the band finally make the annual list of the top 500 UK chart acts of all-time at #492 as of December 2006, after 21 years of releasing singles and albums.