PRIMAL SCREAM*** “Screamadelica” SireIf you’ve liked...

PRIMAL SCREAM*** “Screamadelica” Sire

If you’ve liked any one of the deli platter variety of Primal Scream’s songs on the radio--the Stonesy, gospel-soul-tinged “Come Together” and “Movin’ On Up” or the trance-dance “Slip Inside This House”--this album may still hold a few surprises for you. Or you may find that you just don’t care.

Depending on your perspective, “Screamadelica” is either a winning compendium of contemporary British “alternative” pop styles or a crass, trendoid cash-in. Giving weight to the former opinion are the group’s legitimate knack for writing catchy, happy-making songs and the fact that even when it’s just droning on in a lazy, static, techno mode, the album has an overall--if lightweight--magnetism.

But other than Bobby Gillespie’s attractively wispy voice, this is an act with virtually no distinctiveness. “Loaded,” as hypnotic as its “Sympathy for the Devil/You Can’t Always Get What You Want” riff is, could have been done by anyone, and much of the techno-rambling comes off as filler between the several real (and real fine) songs.

If the band could just concentrate on the song side of things, or at least find a way to better mesh the songs and the trances, then perhaps we’d all scream for Primal Scream. Until then . . . turn off your mind, relax and float with it, if you’re so inclined.

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