Photo Credit: Adam Peter Johnson
Who remembers the year 2000? The dreaded ‘millennium bug’ wasn’t as scary as we all thought, Mad Vlad took over in Russia and … Primal Scream released the XTRMNTR album on 31st January. We would get to hear their sixth album in full tonight and importantly in original album order, there is a right buzz around the area tonight for the second of three sold out shows under the lights of the famous old Barrowland Ballroom.
Tonight’s support are also from Glasgow as the one and only VLURE bring their trance-punk grooves to The Barras, we are very familiar with these guys and have covered a few of their shows with the most memorable being at the Y Not Festival two years ago when rapper Psweatpants was in among the crowd raising the energy. It’s a more laid-back performance tonight and a very quiet crowd that have got down early to watch the VLURE performance … we are loving every minute as they run through a half-hour set filled with highly-charged tracks such as Shattered Faith mixed in well with a few new ones from the September 2025 debut album Escalate. I Want It Euphoric and Feels Like Heaven were the pick of the bunch for us. We are looking forward to seeing VLURE on the next tour. 8/10
At 9pm the lights go down and the place is packed to the rafters now as we reminisce about the last time we saw Primal Scream live, the answer is quite some time ago when they supported The Stone Roses at Glasgow Green way back on 15th June 2013, incidentally they only played the one track from the XTRMNTR album that night: Swastika Eyes. We would get to hear that particular song twice tonight but the set opens with Kill All Hippies – vocalist Bobby Gillespie could easily pass as one of those with his trademark long hair and skinny frame – the band line-up has changed a lot since they were formed in 1982 with Bobby Gillespie the only original member while Andrew Innes on guitar and Darrin Mooney on drums joined in 1987. The musical talent on the stage is electrifying tonight with dynamic brass instruments complementing the vocals throughout the one hour forty minutes set. Accelerator and Exterminator have the crowd listening intensely taking it all in while the first version of Swastika Eyes (Jagz Kooner Mix) is powerful and hits hard as do Blood Money and Keep Your Dreams, this is exactly what the capacity crowd are looking for tonight.
The second coming of Swastika Eyes (Chemical Brothers Mix) is one of the finest played tonight as the screens provide a political backdrop with shocking images of the current state of the world, Bobby Gillespie asks the crowd “who supports Palestine?” as a big cheer goes up in the iconic venue. Bobby dedicates Kowalski to the late Gary ‘Mani’ Mountfield to a huge applause from the fans, Gary was bass player between 1996-2011 and was of course also the bass player for The Stones Roses.
Guess the song from these opening lyrics “Just what is it that you want to do? We wanna be free, we wanna be free to do what we want to do, and we wanna get LOADED”. Loaded is surely one of the most recognisable songs from that era of music, this one is dedicated to the late Andy Weatherall. It is hit after hit now with Movin’ On Up getting the same reaction from the crowd, the old ballroom is jumping now with the spring-loaded floor doing its job well. We all know that the show will soon be coming to and end but there is still time for the anthemic Rocks and Country Girl to end a set that took us on a journey through time while still feeling very relevant. Can we expect the next Primal Scream tour to be a full rendition of the 2002 album Evil Heat? We hope so. 10/10
Written by: Alan Brown
