Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth Utopian Ashes LP

Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie has teamed up with solo artist and Savages vocalist Jehnny Beth to release the collaborative album Utopian Ashes via Third Man Records.

Utopian Ashes explores the loss, miscommunication and emotional inarticulacy that a married couple experience as they realize that their relationship is breaking down. The collection draws on the tradition of country soul classics, such as Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris's Grievous Angel and George Jones and Tammy Wynette's We Go Together, to deal with the heavy realities of love turning sour. It's an album for people who have dealt with the inevitable sadness that comes with age and acknowledged realities of life. There is no sweetening of the pill, but it does achieve what should be the goal of all good art: to make us feel less alone. And while it's not autobiographical, it channels heartfelt truth from the songwriters' own experiences.

"In the same way you create characters for a novel, we've created characters here," says Jehnny Beth. "But you put yourself in it, because you're trying to understand the human situation. The singing has to be authentic. That's all that matters."

"When you write a song you marry the personal with the fictional and make art," adds Gillespie. "I was thinking about two people living alone, together but apart, existing and suffering in a psychic malaise, who plough on because of responsibilities and commitments. It's about the impermanence of everything - an existential fact that everyone has to face at some point in their lives."

Bobby and Jehnny first met in 2015, when they were both invited to perform with Suicide at the Barbican. The following summer Jehnny joined Primal Scream on stage for a duet of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood's "Some Velvet Morning", which cemented their connection. In 2017, they convened in Paris for sessions, accompanied by Beth's musical partner Johnny Hostile and the rest of Primal Scream. Their initial electronic-focused ideas gradually evolved into a richer tapestry of soul, country, blues and rock 'n' roll.

Lead single "Remember We Were Lovers" provides the first taste of what to expect from the album, with Gillespie and Jehnny Beth's emotionally resonant vocals expressing desperately disparate views as their relationship flounders. The official video was directed by Douglas Hart (The Horrors, Paul Weller).

Gillespie explains, "I wanted to put pain back into music. I wasn't hearing a lot of it in modern rock music."

The pain of trying to make something beautiful flourish in a bleak environment is palpable throughout. It feels beyond repair in the southern soul of opener "Chase It Down", while the Scott Walker-like waltz of "English Town" shows that the world outside their door is just as bleak as the relationship itself. But there's a redemptive arc to the story, notably with the elegant "You Can Trust Me Now", in which the male protagonist vows to leave his vices in the past.

In addition to Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth, the album features Johnny Hostile (bass) alongside Primal Scream trio Andrew Innes (guitar), Martin Duffy (piano) and Darrin Mooney (drums).

By pushing each other out of their comfort zones, Beth and Gillespie make Utopian Ashes an unabashedly theatrical - and consistently entertaining - look at falling out of love.

Feigning coupledom, the two singers offer a fictionalized divorce album modeled after the tear-jerking country, soul, and pop duets of yesteryear. They flirt with camp without ever succumbing to it.