No-one, with the best will in the world, could take Primal Scream as seriously as they take themselves. For nearly two decades now, Bobby Gillespie and his associates have conducted one of the most inexhaustible self-mythologising campaigns in the history of rock'n'roll.
They're wasted and beautiful hellions, goes the rhetoric: insurrectionist icons; zealous protectors of the rock'n'roll flame. Pluck a cliché, and Gillespie will have perpetuated it. One of the few surprising things about the Scream isn't that they're all still alive, but that none of them have pretended to be dead - choked on supermodel vomit, perhaps - if only for a few weeks.
Another, though, is the enduring excellence of their records. 'Dirty Hits' proves, once again, that Primal Scream are a potent, gripping - and often inadvertently funny - institution. At times, most notably on 'Jailbird' and the 'Give Out But Don't Give Up' album, their music strives so hard for rock'n'roll verité that it becomes ersatz, a star-spangled comedy routine with bonus monkey-on-back.
As a result, parts of this unreliable greatest hits compilation are entertaining for reasons quite different to those envisaged by the band. The first big joke is that the whole endeavour begins with 1990's 'Loaded', carefully airbrushing from history their earliest years as jangling indie waifs (and ignoring the classic 'Velocity Girl' and 'Imperial'), and their initial, failed reinvention as leather-trousered gods (hence no 'Ivy Ivy Ivy' either).
That said, a reinvention of rock music isn't a bad place to start. And, gripes aside, the 'Screamadelica'-era songs still sound magnificent, in contrast to so many inferior dance-rock hybrids of the time that have aged terribly. As a general rule, the Scream are at their best when they stray furthest from orthodoxy, when they strive to mess with rock'n'roll classicism rather than merely reproduce it.
So the theoretically timeless boogie of 'Rocks' has dated far more than, say, Andy Weatherall's anthemic mix of 'Come Together'. And so the best music on 'Dirty Hits' is relatively recent: the astounding, malignant fuzzstorms from the 'Exterminator' album. We could sit around all day wishing that Kevin Shields would get his arse in gear and reform My Bloody Valentine. But it'd be churlish to expect more from him than the ecstatic carnage he unleashes on 'Accelerator' and 'Shoot Speed Kill Light', or even 'Deep Hit Of Morning Sun', the stand-out track from last year's fractionally undervalued 'Evil Heat'.
In the midst of it all, Gillespie is an awkward, po-faced constant, and his duet with Kate Moss on 'Some Velvet Morning' can't be saved by a glittery new electro mix by Shields. But Gillespie's dogged refusal to see the joke, his tireless reiteration of hackneyed rock'n'roll precepts, must have worked somehow. For here are Primal Scream, a crazily self-conscious project that've made plenty of authentically great music - far more than 'Dirty Hits' can contain. A band, in fact, who've become legends in spite of - rather than because of - wanting to be so nakedly. Well done.
