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Riot City Blues
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 19 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 26 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Sony / Columbia
Release Date: 22 August 2006
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Alternative, Rock
Summary
Alison Mosshart (The Kills), Warren Ellis (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds), and Will Sergeant (Echo and the Bunnymen) guest on the band's first album in four years, which ditches the aggressive, electronic elements of their previous two outings in favor of a more traditional blues-rock homage.
Also By This Artist: Beautiful Future Evil Heat XTRMNTR
Also On The Web: Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Filter
This is the band's most cohesive, accessible, melodic and lyrically viscous record to date. [#21, p.99]
Entertainment Weekly
Sounds like a collection of Exile on Main Street outtakes--and often good ones at that. [25 Aug 2006, p.86]
The Guardian
It's all done with such snarling, adrenalised gusto that it proves irresistible.
Read Full Review >musicOMH.com
Stupid, clichéd, utterly ridiculous for sure, but done with so much pizazz that you can't help but fall for its charms.
Read Full Review >Uncut
It's dumb, downhome fun, and deliberately gizmo-free. [Jul 2006, p.86]
New Musical Express
At its best 'Riot City Blues' is dumb, fun and silly. [3 Jun 2006, p.33]
Playlouder
This album is just a purer distillation, a more joyous exaggeration of the smaller, more tasteful thrills offered by every posturing indie rock band out there.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
Listened to with an open mind, it's a refreshingly retro rock & roll album that uses its waste-oid imagination in capturing every fantasy that entered Bobby Gillespie's teenage mind.
Read Full Review >Spin
Looks back to Dixie-Narco, their 1992 EP that brought raw-power ferocity to Memphis soul. [Sep 2006, p.110]
Rolling Stone
The band mostly avoids the mythic seriousness of the past in favor of party-ready stuff like "Country Girl" and meaty rock sonics.
Read Full Review >Mojo
Though it's certainly refreshing after the murk of 2002's Evil Heat, the results are still variable. [Jul 2006, p.104]
Q Magazine
In creating a party record that will easily translate to the festival season's main stages they've also reversed out of the narrow tunnel that, for all their adventure, they were being led into by the bombastic Xtrmntr and Evil Heat. [Jul 2006, p.110]
PopMatters
Riot City Blues would make a wonderful addition to any pub’s jukebox, but it’s galling how ordinary Primal Scream sound when they’re not crackling with the sparks of invention that coloured a record like Screamadelica.
Read Full Review >cokemachineglow
It's nice that Primal Scream attacks these tunes with gusto, but the passionate performance doesn't hide the fact that this album is utterly inessential, little more than a sampler for what amounts to a really swell wedding band.
Read Full Review >Stylus Magazine
They make two kinds of albums. File Riot City Blues under "Shite."
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 26 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Barry M gave it an8:
Are these people so up their own "I'm such a muso" arse that they can't see this for what it is? A bit of fun, a bit of letting loose and jamming. Having fun in the studio after the mind melting previous albums. A lil bit of folkie whimsical nostalgia as we sip on whisky and let ourselves go with the flow. What rubbish some of these reviewers talk. Go find the next best Chilean mountain band playing "break through" never heard the like of it, next-best-thing- for-wankers-like-us-to-try-appear- all-cool-and-musically-superior-with our friends we've ever heard. Piss off. Go listen to a telephone ringing and tell us how it's "sonic pleasure". This album is fun. Very listenable. Not ground breaking, not re-writing musical history, just pure undiluted fun and games...and what is more...great to listen to while getting drunk on a nice single malt. I approve.
Dagger . gave it a0:
This harkons back to the the southern bar rock shit storm that was Give Out But Don't Give Up. As much as I hate to side with Pitchfork, this record is indeed horrible. Primal Scream is such a weird band in that they can be so groundbeaking and refreshing on some albums, but totally devoid of any substance like we see with this release. "Little Death" and "When The Bomb Drops" are probably the only decent tracks because they sound like nothinbg else on the album.
gaston m gave it a10:
It's a great album.and with this album they show they're just not electronic music. pd1:i love the mandolin solos pd2:the song when the bomb drops is fuckin' great pd:fuck pitchfork and stylus magazine
Andrew A gave it a7:
There are some good old rock songs in this cd. Primal Scream is a band to have fun at, not to really think it.
Ben G gave it a7:
Pitchfork are not the gatekeepers of quality. Sometimes music should be fun, not innovative. I like Primal Scream's forays into electronic music, but it's nice to hear some Give Out-type tunes again.
Alex A gave it an8:
It's good.
moschops gave it a7:
So they've retreated from doing the more experimental stuff of their best work to do an album of big, dumb, retro party songs. But they are very good at doing big, dumb, retro party songs. You can kind of bet that the next album will be wigged-out electronica...
