For Primal Scream’s 2006 album, Riot City Blues, the legendary British group have returned to the rock ‘n roll of the past that inspired them, delivering a rollicking ten track journey through the likes of the Rolling Stones, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Bowie, T. Rex, and even a dash of Johnny Cash. It’s a wild ride that is entirely unexpected, coming after the incredible one-two punch of the electro-opuses XTRMNTR and Evil Heat.

“I think we went back our roots a little more and made a more traditional-sounding record,” outlines former Stone Roses bassist Mani. For the legendary rhythm keeper, it marks the first time in his Primal Scream career that he hasn’t had to record into a computer, and it’s something that he believes benefited both him and his playing. “I’m at my best when I’m in a room with people and able to visualise and bounce off people,” he says. “The process of how we wrote this record is that we all got together in a room again and just jammed and threw ideas around, rather than piling stuff into the computer. We just went to basics, kinda.”

“It was good,” confirms the hangover-nursing guitarist Andrew Innes, who has been with the group from their paisley beginnings. “We did it differently in that we wrote a lot of songs, and then when we went in we recorded it really quickly and mixed it really quickly, whereas a normal record could take years. It sounds like it.”

In some ways it’s a bit like Spiritualized’s Amazing grace – another album that made really quickly and worked really well as a result. “I think there’s something to say for not messing about and taking too much time with it,” Andrew confirms.

Riot City Blues came together very quickly, taking a mere 10 days to record. Maybe there’s a lot to be said for quick recording techniques, and simplifying the sounds. “This album is just designed to get out of the van, plug in, and play,” Mani outlines. “You don’t need the technologies of the sequencers or things like that. We’re really, really enjoying playing this album, and normally when we play new songs to an audience they stand there and scratch their heads, but on this one it’s like they know ‘em already, so it’s heartening.”

“I think when you get into routines it’s bad for music,” Andrew continues, “and you start repeating yourself. I think it’s good to break away from what you did last time and I think it’s good to do that, and try and do something different.”

Undoubtedly one of the key factors in the adjusted sound of Primal Scream is the absence of my bloody valentine legend Kevin Shields, who has been with the band since XTRMNTR. “We started writing the songs and the direction we were going in was showing that we weren’t going to be needing this big, mad wall of sound this time around, y’know?” Mani explains.

“He was already away at that point in time, because he was busy doing another soundtrack for a Sofia Coppola film,” Andrew says. “We just got our heads down and got on with things. Everybody seems to think Kevin was there; he was only there when we recorded one record, and that was XTRMNTR. He’s always helped mix them.”

There also seems to have been a deliberate approach made by the band to lessen their overt politicking, especially after “Blow Up the Pentagon” actually came true. Certainly both XTRMNTR and Evil Heat were very political, but Mani states that the politics of this record is the politics of enjoyment. “We didn’t feel the need to ram the politics down anybody’s throat this time, and just to enjoy the music.”

Andrew agrees that it’s a deliberate approach. “I think if you keep on repeating yourself it gets boring,” he says. “We grew up with glam rock and the lyrics of T. Rex and David Bowie and things like that you never really knew what they were on about.”

“We’re doffing our cap to everyone who we love,” Mani says. “Your influences will always find their ways through – it’s got a touch of glam, a touch of country, a touch of punk – everything we love.”

When it came to recording, the Primal Scream pair explain that there was never any set out or definite plan. Instead, the band decamped to their own studio and hung out together, and let the recordings evolve very naturally. “A song will tell you when it’s finished,” Mani avers, “and I know it sounds a bit pretentious, but that’s how it works. We don’t say ‘right, let’s make an acid house record’, but we just go in and see what happens with it.”

After they did make their classic ‘acid house’ record, the incredible Screamadelica, Primal Scream made Give Out But Don’t Give Up, which Riot City Blues echoes to some degree, following on from the experimental sounds of the Kevin Shields-assisted one-two punch of XTRMNTR and Evil Heat. “That record is a bit boring, whereas I don’t think this record is boring,” Andrew says of Give Out.... “We were messed up at the time and I don’t think we had enough good songs; “Rocks” is a good song, but we didn’t have many songs and we were really not in a good place.”

And that’s what really stands out about Riot City Blues – the songs are crackling with energy and verve. “It was deliberate,” Andrew confirms. “We had a lot of good up-tempo songs as opposed to slow ones.”

“It’s a good time rock ‘n roll record, for once,” Mani claims. “We just wanted to make the record as uncluttered and uncomplicated as possible, and I think it makes it more accessible. The last couple of LPs were really dark, and not very people-friendly in a way, if you get what I’m saying. We wanted to make a record that was easier on the ear and on the mind, y’know.”

Primal Scream’s Riot City Blues is out now, with the band eager to come back on tour. In fact, Mani claims that the band are more than eager to return to the Big Day Out, of which they were a part in 1999.