Riot City Blues - Primal Scream
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Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 19 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 27 Ratings

  • 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.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 19
  2. Negative: 4 out of 19
  1. 90
    This is the band's most cohesive, accessible, melodic and lyrically viscous record to date. [#21, p.99]
  2. 80
    It's dumb, downhome fun, and deliberately gizmo-free. [Jul 2006, p.86]
  3. 60
    Though it's certainly refreshing after the murk of 2002's Evil Heat, the results are still variable. [Jul 2006, p.104]
  4. 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.

See all 19 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 19
  2. Negative: 4 out of 19
  1. gastonm
    10
    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 Expand
  2. BarryM
    8
    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. Expand
  3. AndrewA
    7
    There are some good old rock songs in this cd. Primal Scream is a band to have fun at, not to really think it.
  4. Steve
    4
    Extremely disapointing. I love Primal Scream and was expecting something innovative and catchy, which they always manage to do, until now. There's absolutely nothing interesting here. Just a very bland, shallow album. Expand

See all 19 User Reviews