Check out Primal Scream’s track-by-track guide to ‘Come Ahead’

As Primal Scream gear up to release a remix album of 2024’s Come Ahead, frontman Bobby Gillespie has shared a track-by-track breakdown of the original album.

The record arrives on March 28th ahead of their UK and Ireland headline tour, and sees the group offer up eleven re-workings of tracks from their twelfth studio album.

There’s Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant on the ‘Innocent Money (PSB King Of The World Remix)’, while house veterans Terry Farley and Wade Teo offer up a white label remix of ‘Ready To Go Home’.

But, before that record arrives, we’ve got Bobby G to offer up his take on the record. You can check it out in full below.

Ready To Go Home

It’s dark, but it’s also up, full of humour. After I wrote it, I sang it to my dad the night before he died. It was just me and him in the hospital. His body had given up. I think, when you get old and tired and your body just goes, ‘I’ve had enough. Time to go.’ I was trying to write about that feeling, I don’t know why – maybe I was feeling tired myself. Sometimes I do. When i wrote this song i was thinking, there must be a point in your life where you think, time to go home.

Love Insurrection

We live in divided times, people are exhausted, humiliated, angry and are responding to charismatic leaders who offer simple solutions to complex problems. A warning about the dangers of binary thinking. 21st century fascism is gaining electoral power over the world. The elevation of the ‘true people of the nation state’ over the economic migrant, the immigrant, the ‘other’. It’s a warning about the upsurge again of “The religion of the flag”. War is sure to follow.

Heal Yourself

This is a tale of personal struggle where the song’s protagonist is caught up in the horrors of addiction, but is saved by a heroic lover who is praised for their strength and fortitude. It’s a song of sin and redemption. It’s saying if you want to heal yourself, you have to open yourself up and allow love in.

Innocent Money

The eternal story of the class struggle. I thought about how we’re such a wealthy country and we have record levels of homelessness and child poverty. I’m writing from the perspective of two different characters. These lyrics are cut down from a long form poem I wrote whilst on tour in December 2019 after seeing a young homeless man in a sleeping bag in an underpass near our band hotel. With the rap in the middle section by Renee Alynne i’m trying to voice the anger of somebody that feels that the system is rigged against them and they can’t get anywhere because of many reasons: class, colour, lack of opportunity, lack of money.

Melancholy Man

In 2021 I was asked by French film director Émilie Deleuze to write the soundtrack to her new movie, 5 Hectares. I said yes, because I wanted to challenge myself to see what I could do outside of the band. One of those songs was Melancholy Man, which was then reworked with David Holmes and Andrew Innes. Andrew’s guitar playing is incredible on this song. I think this album has some of Andrew Innes’s best guitar playing. It sounds like a sad song, but it’s really saying, ‘Toughen up! You’ve got a lot going for you, if only you could see. You can be better. Find the strength within yourself to overcome whatever it is that’s got you in this state of inertia.’

Love Ain’t Enough

Written from the point of view of a hardened, maybe cynical person. Seeing things for what they really are is not always jaded cynicism – reality hurts. Get used to it.

Circus Of Life

This song is written in the third person. A non-judgemental narrative of somebody outside watching an alcoholic’s disintegration in the shrunken world that they find themselves in. It’s trying to describe the chaotic world of the alcoholic or addict where the normal rules of society have been upturned. It’s telling it like it is: it is hell.

False Flags

I have complete respect and empathy for the soldier. My dad joined the army aged 17 because he had no other options. Soldiers are largely young, working class men from impoverished areas who are not well educated. My dad says it made a man of him, so I can see that it can give somebody self-belief, but nobody escapes from war. Nobody comes back from it unscathed. It’s a gentle song about a brutal subject, but it’s full of empathy for the subject of the song and anybody like him who finds themselves in this situation.

Deep Dark Waters

Deep Dark Waters is influenced by the writings of Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi. It contains a warning from history. “Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”. Once again, the religion of the flag is leading us into Deep Dark Waters.

The Centre Cannot Hold

I have no idea what inspired this song. Is it poking a withering finger at the “lifestyle” delusion? Is it a satire about the new religion of wellness etc? Well, the verses, at least. Is it a joyful mocking of lovers drowning in their own narcissism? Is it an attack on the extreme centre of political discourse? Or is it about the impossibility of truly knowing another person? We live behind so many masks.

Settlers Blues

It’s that old story of conquest and oppression, and flight from violence and slavery. I guess being Scottish, I always had an interest in anti-colonial struggle, wherever that be. People go to another country and take it over by murdering the native  people, driving them off their land. Stealing it. Settling it. You either stay and fight or leave. In some cases, those who left went to another country and did the same terrible things to the indigenous people there. It’s the curse of colonialism; a cycle of violence, war and hatred. Maybe the song is me making sense of why I identify with the oppressed. The struggle continues. Blessed are those who struggle.

Primal Scream’s Come Ahead: The Remixes Vol 1 (Vocals) is due 28 March via BMG. The Come Ahead Tour launches in the UK at Bristol Beacon on 31 March.

UK and Ireland Headline Tour Dates 2025

31 March Bristol, Beacon * %

1 April Southampton, O2 Guildhall * %

3 April Edinburgh, Usher Hall *

4 April Glasgow, O2 Academy *

5 April Glasgow, O2 Academy *

7 April Birmingham, O2 Academy *%

8 April Liverpool, Mountford Hall *%

10 April London, Eventim Apollo +%

11 April Manchester, Aviva Studios *%

12 April Nottingham, Rock City *%

14 April Belfast, Ulster Hall

15 April Dublin, 3Olympia Theatre

18 April Leeds, O2 Academy ~

19 April Newcastle, O2 City Hall ~

* = with support from Baxter Dury

+ = with support from Fat White Family

~ = with support Dylan John Thomas 

% = with support Mozart Estate