When
the Primitives re-formed in 2009 to play a show in tribute to recently deceased bassist Steve Dullaghan, they had no long-term plan to stay together. However, the glowing response to that show and a few others led to a tour and the excellent 2011
Never Kill a Secret EP. The recordings showed that
the Primitives had lost none of their punch over the years and maybe sounded better than they did when they broke up in 1991. The release of their 2012 album
Echoes and Rhymes confirms this suspicion. It's made up of covers of fairly obscure girl-fronted songs from the 1960s and sounds super poppy, but has a nice noisy bite too.
Tracy Tracy sounds like she hasn't aged a day, Paul Court's guitars have plenty of kick, and producer Paul Sampson makes sure not to clean things up too much. The songs the group picked are uniformly good too, from the ultra cutesy "Turn Off the Moon" from the Lolita soundtrack to the spooky "The Witch," which was recorded by German duo Adam and Eve. The depth of their record collections is impressive, and when the most obvious song on a covers album is a 1965 single by
Nico ("I'm Not Sayin'"), there is some serious deep catalog digging going on. No matter the style, whether the girl group sounds of Reparata & the Delrons' "Panic" or the ye-ye stomp of Laura Ulmer's "Amoureux d'une Affiche,"
the Primitives make the songs their own. They sound thrilled to be playing together again and that feeling of happiness comes through the grooves like a warm embrace. So many comebacks are ruined in so many different ways; it's a real treat to hear a band pull off a reunion with style, and more importantly, a record good enough to measure up to the band's best work. ~ Tim Sendra