While The Primevals, Glasgow’s premier garage rock psychedelic free jazz grunge band have recently had a brush with fame due to a link up with Stuart Lee (““the world’s greatest living stand-up comedian” The Times”, as Lee always gleefully points out) via their song I’m The Man-Wulf, their front man Michael Rooney has stealthily released a solo album.
Intersections is not a great departure from recent Primevals albums, primarily because Rooney’s dead pan, dead cool vocals are to the front and centre, but across the seven songs here he has the opportunity to spread out a bit while his band mates (assorted Primevals and like minded associates) contort themselves to accommodate the shifts. Thus we have the opening elemental skeletal blues of Rattlin’ Like A Ghost Train, surely a nod to the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce of The Gun Club. It’s a rattling good start to the disc but Rooney’s not constrained to post punk voodoo rock’nroll as exhibited by the closing number, Prisoner Of The Mind which sees his existential lyrics backed by the band vamping an excellent mix of a Doors’ like groove while the sax is halfway up the scaffold ladder alongside Miles Davis with Pharaoh Saunders looking in.
In between these there’s a wealth of juicy nuggets. Let The Past Go surges on a Stooges’ like blitzkrieg of guitars while a drum roll introduces the trance like undulations of Laughter And Fun, a song which just gets more twisted and discombobulated as it creeps on like some deadly slouching beast. Aside from its viper like guitar groove, Outside has a tenor sax pumping out the adrenalin as Rooney roams like a nightmarish night stalker and this sense of being an outsider is continued in the best song here, Leave The People Behind. Here Rooney is declaiming as opposed to singing as the band delve into grooves which characterised late 1960s black protest rock, soul and jazz.
It’s a short album (seven songs, 27 minutes) but Intersections contains multitudes which unfold on repeated listens and, in a just world, it would command some attention.