The Primitives - Petals

There’s a school of thought that says that once bands have split they shouldn’t reform. We’re not of that school. Not every band reforms for the money. As artists, sometimes the creative juices slow as the years pass and some may want to reinvigorate them by getting together again with the people who galvanised that creativity in the first place. For some the acrimonious divorces that some bands go through, given time, leave the parties feeling sad, empty and missing something in their lives. They realise as they mature that life is too short to hold feuds and want to repair the damage done. Sometimes reforming is part of the process of doing that. But even if it’s just about doing it for the money what’s so bad about that? If your profession is a musician then why shouldn’t you earn from it? 

Which brings us to The Primitives. Whilst Breaking More Waves generally focusses on new and emerging talent, we’re also ultimately a new music blog and so that means that if a band reform and put out new material that we think is worth celebrating, then we’re going to wave some internet based flags.

For those of you old enough to remember the first time round, or for those with a good musical education, the Morrissey endorsed indie band from Coventry surged to a brief moment of fame in the late 80’s with a clutch of sprightly indie pop anthems such as Thru The Flowers and Stop Killing Me before hitting the big time with Crash, a Top 10 single and the subsequent album Lovely. Two further less successful albums followed before the band split, until they reformed a few years ago. The reason for the reformation? The death of their original bass player, the band regrouping to play a gig in his memory. In 2011 the band released a new EP Never Kill A Secret and followed it up with an album Echoes And Rhymes, a collection of obscured 50’s and 60’s girl fronted cover versions.

Now The Primitives return with Spin-O-Rama their first album of original material since 1991. From it comes new song Petals, an upbeat old-school indie pop song that will please original fans as well as newer listeners who have the likes of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Fear Of Men or Veronica Falls in their album collections. (That is if anyone still collects music with the advent of streaming). Petals gets straight to the point, fizzling with a joyous jangly guitar urgency, a snappy and sweet melody from Tracy Tracy on vocals and at just two minutes and thirty seconds the song never outstays its welcome. Sharp and exciting, Petals leaves us a little breathless, not bad for a band who are probably old enough to be most modern day indie acts parents.

The Primitives - Petals