Vanishing Point was Primal Scream's fifth album, released in 1997 on the Creation label in the UK and Ireland, and on Sony or Sire/Reprise elsewhere.
Track Listing:
- Burning Wheel (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- Get Duffy (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- Kowalski (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy, Mounfield)
- Star (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- If They Move, Kill 'Em (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- Out Of The Void (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- Stuka (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- Medication (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- Motörhead (Kilmister)
- Trainspotting (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
- Long Life (Gillespie, Innes, Young, Duffy)
Personnel:
Vanishing Point was a great return to form for the Scream Team, after the disappointing retro mess that was Give Out But Don't Give Up. The album begins with the long, trippy instrumental build-up to Burning Wheel, the bassline coming in as sitars and tablas float through the ether with electronic bleeps, before Gillespie's bruised vocals appear and the song coalesces behind him; it ends with the woozy come-down of Live Life, where Bobby tells us "it's good to be alive", while sounding on the verge of passing out.
In between, we get the jazzy/techno instrumentals of Get Duffy (named after their keyboard player) and If They Move, Kill 'Em, the soothing melodica of rebel song Star, the spooky vocoder vocals of Stuka, and an incredibly kitchy disco cover of Lemmy's Motörhead, which features original Sex Pistols bassist, Glen Matlock.
Most of the songs here are enhanced by the wonderful, bouncy bass guitar of Mani, who joined after The Stone Roses split up. He adds a kind of effortless funkiness to a lot of the tunes, especially Burning Wheel and Medication (which sounds suspiciously like Rocks from their previous album).
Vanishing Point was half inspired by the film of the same name (see above); the first single, Kowalski, was named after the film's hero, and contains samples of most of the dialogue quoted in meiso's writeup, above.
To sum up, Vanishing Point is an excellent, atmospheric album with some very cinematic moments (Trainspotting was originally written for the soundtrack of the film of the same name). It's only weak points are Bobby Gillespie's occasionally clumsy lyrics, but the music is so good, that you can always forgive him.