Primo! are making guitar music that explores the boundaries of everyday life with calm levity, tilted grace and grit.
Release Date: 17th April 2020
Label: Upset The Rhythm / Anti Fade
Format: CD / LP / Digital
Primo! are guitarists Xanthe Waite, Violetta DelConte Race, drummer Suzanne Walker and new bassist Amy Hill. This raw but uplifting album by this Australian quartet, is a refreshing and enlightening piece of music.
A heavily focused guitar band, Primo! thrashes out tons of riffs, guitar tones with flashes of sound effects and they have cooked up a tantalising new taste of punky upbeat thrills.
An opening fuzzy simple riff over a few ascending notes sets the mood in Things To Do and continues with a policy of ‘less is more’ on Perfect Paper; the backing singing mirrored by the main vocal and backing vocals, which is simplicity in itself…repetitive maybe, but not monotonous .
The Machine is a defiant move against being structured to those who control us with repeated rules, machine like, but the message soon washes over us rather than sink in. The drummer Suzanne Walker says the song ‘contemplates workplace and hierarchies.’
The Best and the Fairest poses an interesting dilemma to ponder what we value the most. What would we forfeit if we had to jettison to be left with what we consider to be of most need to us?
Most of us seek solace in a close attachment and whatever is thrown at us to disrupt fails as the relationship is most meaningful in life, but the song Love Days rues the loss of such a friendship.
The simplicity continues with 1000 words and Rolling Stone, which has a slight deviation with some discordant effects at the end; the same could also be said for Diamond Days. The album moves briskly until finally the pace slackens for the finale of Reverie. It flows along with gentler chords and is mainly instrumental having just just two short verses.
With some repetition within the riffs, Primo! keep their songs brief; the longest at only 3 minutes 14 seconds with most of the rest averaging out at around the 2 and half minute mark. In these short pieces they concisely, like the drumming, shuffle smartly make their point, and finish in a little under thirty minutes for the twelve compositions.
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