THE PRIMITIVES - "YOU TRASHED MY CHRISTMAS" (2012)

Not all Christmas songs are unwanted tat as demonstrated here by a festive offering from The Primitives, taken from a new compilation A Christmas Gift To You From Elefant Records. Yes it has bells, yes it has bouncing children in the video, but it's also a good song so I kinda wish it wasn't about Christmas so could be enjoyed all year without looking like a weirdo. They spoil us, they really do. And remember Echoes and Rhymes (in the Monkey Picks Top 3 albums of 2012) would make a lovely stocking filler...

THE PRIMITIVES at the BORDERLINE, LONDON

I see artists supposedly past their prime on a regular basis and it’s usually a case of focusing on the good parts, glossing over the not so good, and cutting them plenty of slack on account of credit earned in previous lives.  At times it’s even enough to have a few beers in their company as a small payback for the pleasure they’ve given.  Occasionally though, like the New York Dolls, they can still cut the mustard by dipping into their illustrious past yet remaining firmly in the present.  When done well, devoid of showbizzy revivalism, it’s unbeatable.  The Primitives on Friday night, on whatever gig measuring tool one uses, were unbeatable. 

They took ten songs from their past and with beautiful symmetry matched them with ten songs from their present.  The white-knuckle ride of early single “Stop Killing Me” was thrilling and yet near equalled by the tambourine battering given to Suzi Jane Hokom’s “Need All The Help I Can Get”.   The dreamy psychedelic jangle of debut 45 “Thru The Flowers” (which received the loudest cheer of the night) was suitably twinned with their folk pop take on Polly Nile’s “Sunshine In My Rainy Day Mind”.

Most of the current material was taken from their recent 60s girl-sung covers LP Echoes and Rhymes but old favourites, with their baa-ba-ba-ba-bas and their sha-la-la-la-las, sound like girl group covers anyway.  The effervescent “Spacehead” was a prime example, albeit a girl-fronted group covering the Ramones covering a girl group.  Hearing “Spacehead” followed by a powerfully petulant “Sick Of It” was the best back-to-back songs I’ve seen played in a long time.

Tracy Tracy remains a beguiling performer, possibly a more confident one than before, and sparkled from her kitten ears to her glittery toes.  She always, of course, received all the attention (one man on Friday patiently waited at the front of the stage to give her a bunch of red roses, not sure where that fitted on the sliding scale of kind gesture/creepy weirdo) but I always loved the way Paul Court looked on the cover of their second LP, Pure.  He’s still got a decent Barnet and an eye for a nice Chelsea boot, and Tig Williams kept standing behind his petal painted drum kit in shades of Keith Moon, whose picture adorned a vintage lamp stood on Paul Sampson’s bass amp.  The Primitives have lost none of their style and class.  I wonder what they do for day jobs.  They shouldn’t have any. 

There was no reminiscing, no do-you-remember when?, so it didn’t feel like an exercise in nostalgia, it felt like watching a fresh band with a great bunch of songs.  The only reference, and a telling one, came in their introduction to “Crash”, “This is our take on a song from the 80s by a band called the Primitives”.  I remember them, they were good, but these Primitives are blooming marvellous.   

THE PRIMITIVES - ECHOES AND RHYMES (2012)

Washed up has-beens reform and make an album of cover versions. On the surface a difficult one to sell yet the first Primitives LP for 21 years is a triumph from start to finish.

The death of their bassist Steve Dullaghan acted as the catalyst for their reunion but rather than any sense of gloom this is a gloriously upbeat album of songs originally recorded by female-fronted 60s bands. Covers LPs can sound like randomly knocked together compilations but even though there’s a healthy variety of styles they slot together as fluidly af walking through different themed rooms at a big 60s club night like Le Beat Bespoke before ending back at an after-party.

I’ve witnessed many a swirling freak across Europe swish a technicoloured batwing to Bonnie St Claire’s “I Surrender” and it’s never been a favourite of mine but I like it here and that Euro psych theme is continued on “Amoureux D’Une Affiche” which is so ludicrously catchy it kept me awake last night as it sang through my brain.

If the more psychedelic beat numbers could’ve been predicted on past form, their venture into the soul cellar is perhaps more surprising. Little Ann’s “Who Are You Trying to Fool?” was a biggie a few years ago and whilst the soul purists may baulk at it being given the rumbling fuzz treatment it works a treat.

In fact, there isn’t anything that doesn’t work: from the pop-punk, psych-fuzz, soul-beat to dreamy-folk. I’ve played it a dozen times so far and not skipped a track once. Of the fourteen songs only one is longer than two minutes something seconds so it invites repeated plays. My favourite track changes each listen but right now it’s either the girl group swing of "Till You Say You'll Be Mine" or the sweet jiggering pop fun of “Turn Off The Moon”. And that’s it; it’s a fun album of shiny pop innocence heard through the flowers in the park on a cheap pink transistor radio.

You can keep your cash hungry big band reformations and your cynical marketing of “classic album” tours. Where’s the love of music? It’s here in Echoes and Rhymes.

Monkey picks eight out of ten bananas. Released by Elefant Records on 30th April 2012.