Primus Full Album
Yi Pressimone
The new Primus album, Brown Album, is a major step in theirsongwriting process. If you gave a random non-Primus fan all thePrimus albums they would most likely say: Gone are the unnescesarylong instrumental jams as seen on Pork Soda, and the wierdness ofPunchbowl. However to the lifelong Primus fan it may not be such agood thing. I think this is their best album since Seas of Cheese. Iteasily beats Punchbowl, Pork Soda, Misc.Debris, and Suck onThis. However, it is not as good as Seas of Cheese, and FrizzleFry. Some of the changes on this album are the departure of Herb, andthe addition of Brain. Brain is much more a strightforward rockdrummer as opposed to the busy playing of Herb. Gone are the nasalvocals of Les, he actually sings on this one. Les does not do as muchsoloing on his bass this album and tends to go for the moretraditional bass line (with a few exceptions). About the only thingthat remains the same is Ler's excellent guitar playing.
Goldenboy: The most obvious example of traditional Primus. Anexcellent song where Les and Ler double a blistering intro riff. Oneof the best showings of Lers skill on any album. Overall one of thebest songs on the album.
Bob's Party Time Lounge: Despite a terrible intro, this song isone of the best if not the best on the album. Probably Les's bestplaying. Traditional Ler playing. Brain also plays some excellentbeats. One of the few songs where they really jam.
Duchess and the Proverbial Mind Spread: A very hard technicallysong. Written in odd 5/4,6/4 mesure progression. This song shows thetight playing that Primus have rarely shown in the past. Brain and Lesare telepathically accurate on this one. Another strong showing ofLes's vocals. A great song.
Coddingtown: Starts off with a great heavymetal riff from Ler andin comes the rest of the band. Les uses an upright through somedistortion pedal with some harmonic effect. It's the first time iveheard him use an upright on this type of heavymetal song. A very goodsong.
The Chastising of Renegade- Some nice strumming in the intro byLes. Brain and Les work well off of one another as do Les and Ler.Les puts an overall great performance on this song. His vocals arealso very good. Again some nice guitar work by Ler.
This album has a few bad tracks with the rest being great. Theone thing that dissapointed me was the sound of the recording. It hasa very low grade sound. The drums for the most part sound terrible.That's not to say Brain doesnt play very well. The record just doesnthave the same sound quality of any of the other albums. This isprobably due to them recording it at Les's house. However once youget past that detail it is a great album. I would urge anyone to buyit.
Is the schtick getting old or is Primus struggling to remain Primus? This is the most Frank Zappa drenched in Ketamine of all of their albums thus far. The album just kicks off with a sluggish spoken word mistake of a track and is never able to catch up with itself. I will applaud the band for leaning away from the catchy hooks into more experimental territory, unfortunately that experiment was a failure.
Like the Kinks, every song is its own sad little story about loss, fate, and Kubrick. At least that is what I got out of it. This album is like a Rorschach Test, everyone is going to get something different out of it but in the end it is probably just silly nonsense. Primus has a way of drawing pictures with their music, strange little doodles in the margins of society but somehow, at least with their best albums, they are able to remain just barely within the lines of pop-music making enjoyable melodies out of the strangest of circumstances.
In hindsight, the band themselves regarded it a difficult album to digest, but there is a lot of magic between its grooves, along with a tremendous amount of passion and courageous soul that assisted Claypool and co in becoming one of the most highly regarded bands in the alt.metal/rock history books.
Primus singer and bassist Les Claypool says that the idea for the band's seventh studio album, a cover of the soundtrack to the 1971 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, started as an idea in his head for a cover of "Candy Man." Then, the idea became the theme for one of Primus' annual New Year's Eve shows in San Francisco. The record, titled Primus And The Chocolate Factory, comes out October 21.
"I was in grammar school and was completely enamored by the film, and can remember sitting in the theater watching the credits roll up with the imagery from the actual chocolate-factory assembly or whatever that was," Claypool tells NPR's Arun Rath. "A conveyor belt full of Hershey's Kisses and various things. And it just stuck right to me. I was hooked."
Claypool says that, at this point in his career, he isn't so self-conscious about his band's perceived wackiness. Still, he says he knows taking on a beloved film like Wonka is always risky, especially after Tim Burton's 2005 remake.
Very good review. I think you captured the album quite well. I have listened to the album quite a bit today and it gets better with each listen and I keep discovering new nooks and crannies with each track. Its good stuff.
Oompa Loompa songs are a bit repetitive (but they sound good), a few Primus albums circle back to a theme of sound.
This review was excellent. My only minor complaint was the repitition of the oompa loompa tracks and im glad to see i wasnt the only one. IMO this album is the most dark and twisted album i have ever listened to. Even more so than Disco Volante in which Mike Patton turned my mind inside out. Primus and the chocolate factory will force you to dive deep into places of your mind you may never have planned on visiting.
One more logistical note: The Grand Wazoo is not Frank. The Grand Wazoo is an oversized megaphone from which Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus speaks to the Questions. [Just read the liner notes to The Grand Wazoo & Uncle Meat.]
Okay. I feel better now. Thank you for your time.
Perhaps the winning Primus formula had been exhausted, and so we got something quite different this time around. The band got a new drummer, Brain, who plays a straightforward downbeat style through most of this album. He shows flashes of flair here and there, but that hill-and-valley bounce from the earlier Primus stuff is gone.
So it goes with 1971's 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.' The window of opportunity is small to believe that a kid can inherit and run a multinational business, or that winning a contest will get granddad back onto his atrophied legs. But perhaps even more so, one must be just the right age to hear the beauty and weirdness of the film's songs, written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley.
The songs themselves often contain an underlying hint of menace (as does Dahl's book), but it is the brilliant Gene Wilder who brings them to life. 'Semi-Wondrous Boat Ride' was my introduction to psychedelia at an age when I was too young to even pronounce the word:
I have no doubt that my fondness for surrealist painting, David Lynch, and freak out music all have as their locus 'Willy Wonka.' Tim Burton, too, so when 2005's remake was announced I was over the moon. Johnny Depp? Danny Elfman? Come on!
Maybe I wasn't the right age for Burton's version. I remember bits and pieces, but for the most part both the film and Elfman's music left me cold. The whole thing felt derivative, not so much of the original movie but of the Tim Burton filmography.
The same might be true of Primus's reimagining of the Bricusse/Newley songs from the original film. Cover songs are a tricky business. The best remakes teach us something about the song that we didn't already know. Garth Brooks demonstrated that KISS' 'Hard Luck Woman' is a pretty little country song, for example.
The worst are no more than note for note karaoke retreads that completely miss the point. Celine Dion's version of the AC/DC classic, 'You Shook Me All Night Long,' might be the finest example of this phenomenon.
Or more specifically, your opinion is dependent upon how you feel about Les Claypool. It's all here: the virtuoso bass performance, the tongue in cheek vocal delivery, the bouncy beats and noodly weirdness. Inevitably, 'Primus & the Chocolate Factory,' like Tim Burton's film remake, sinks or swims not on the artistic merits of the source material, but rather on the character of its interpreter.
Regardless, if you're a record collector take note: five copies of the album have been printed on gold vinyl. If you find a copy you'll win free tickets for life, but more importantly you'll have a true rarity in your stacks:
c80f0f1006