You can't rely on brilliance.

We know that.

Scotland's Primal Scream have been around since 1982, living a chaotic legend of giant ambition and false-starts, morphing and mutating throughout the years from C86 janglists to mainline rock worshipers to ecstasy-addled dance futurists and then onto paranoid dub millennialists, insane political oracles, and, with last year's Beautiful Future, their ninth album, a new brand of optimistic electronic/guitar kraut-pop.

With a band like this, you can only count on unpredictability, not whether or not they're any good.

This is why Primal Scream are brilliant.

Believers of the myth of rock, of music, Bobby Gillespie's gang are forever changing, forever trying to reorient themselves, but always while keeping intact a single, coherent thread over their years. New ideas. Identical themes. Etc.

Think two breathless classics.

1991's Screamadelica, a gorgeous, bursting, and universal indie/dance trip through the birth and butchery of British acid house culture. And 2000's XTRMNTR, where Primal Scream — with the help of Adrian Sherwood, Kevin Shields, Chemical Brothers, and more — lob an apocalyptic bomb of free-form, anti-genre sonic terrorism, hating vowels and prophesying geo-political insanity before anyone else, and ending up, staring out at the world, with one of the most furious records ever made.

There are also some more embarrassing moments, like 1989's Primal Scream, 1994's Give Out But Don't Give Up, or 2006's Riot City Blues. Which oozed from the band's more traditional rockist faults, like pus from a tumor.

Primal Scream, though, are back at it.

While 2008's Beautiful Future doesn't quite hit with as much heat as it should, its attempt to use modern guitar and dance music to both daylight '70s no wave and bring a lightness, a relevance, back to the band, is enough of a healthy and interesting sign of progress that you want to forgive everything again. The stroll of Big Audio Dynamite melody that's "The Glory Of Love" chimes in your head long after it's gone, while the upbeat, peaceful rhythm and bells of the title-track sound like the sun melting away years of shit culture. The artwork is all 'Videodrome,' like it knows something we don't.

In other words, Primal Scream haven't been to America in nearly a decade, and we had to get on a plane to San Francisco to see them before it was too late.

Tonight, you see, the inside of The Fillmore is dark. And appropriate. There's a blue satin backdrop. Low lights. A tape of the band's Irvine Welsh one-off comes on. There, silhouettes. But it begins with 1997's "Kowalski". It should always begin with "Kowalski". Evil as fuck as ever and cracked with effects, where Mani, who joined the band after the break-up of The Stone Roses, employs its central, addictive, dead-eyed bassline, fresh and alive but not full of wank, like no one else. There are strobes. It's very loud.

In comes the new stuff, which is scattered at just the right level throughout the night, from the unfortunately paint-by-numbers "Can't Go Back," but also to the two aforementioned highlights and a long, mesmerizing, strung-out "Uptown," which dissolves into 2002's "Autobahn 66" and gets an unexpected and huge response from an audience who's forced to follow their band by imports.

Bobby Gillespie's voice is a bit raw, and it can always be a bit thin, but his charisma's aged well. He wears tight trousers and a sharp, no-button jacket, and his hair is mid-length. He's intent and looks vital.

Lots of Screamadelica, too. "Moving On Up" fits surprisingly well against the new songs, and when the latter are thrown against XTRMNTR, like the hyper-volatile call-to-arms of "Kill All Hippies" or the nuclear Stooges attack of "Accelerator," the contrast is throttling.

At the end of "Pills," Gillespie shouts with everyone, "Fuck fuck sick fuck fuck sick fuck fuck sick fuck fuck sick fuck fuck sick fuck fuck sick fuck fuck sick fuck fuck sick fuck fuck."

After that it's the welcome after-rave suicide of 1991's "I'm Comin' Down" and you think everything's over, in both ways. But then Gillespie nods, looks at the crowd, and says, "Here," before the band replaces the room with 2006's endlessly enjoyable, better-than-it-should-be, mandolin-fried "Country Girl," the band's biggest chart success and the definition of a band not taking themselves too seriously.

And then, napalm. It's "Swastika Eyes". Military future disco. Backed by "MBV Arkestra". A slither of a thing. A nasty creep of a song. The one that, over about fifteen minutes, ratchets layer upon layer, loop upon loop, of brass and feedback and house and warps of terror and rage and noise, escalating itself, at last, into a fever-pitched hurricane of inescapable and ear-shattering rational collapse.

It's the sound of losing your mind.

Staggered, no one says a word or moves. Without a pause, though — no encore — you hear it already.

Those vocals. That gospel.

Would they? "Come Together"?

Cripes. Perfect. A sea of hands. This is Primal Scream. Except at their most opposite.

It's joyous. Hopeful. A soundtrack of warm revolution.

Tonight, it's what we needed. It made more sense back in the middle of acid house. And it made more sense back in November. But it'll make sense again, and we'll be lucky if Primal Scream are there to play it for us, to help us out, with all of their contradictions and brilliant unreliability.

And we'll go as far as it takes to feel this again.

Or, to be honest, it might've been like that.

If we hadn't gotten ill and had to cancel the whole trip.

Goddammit.

Sck. Fck.

Photo by ktc19.