The band's Rolling Stones affection had been always detectable, but the Jagger/Richards boogie was paraded loudly and proudly on 1994's Give Out But Don't Give Up (also Sire). Then came the dark, dubby, and often brain-scrambling electro-cinematics and thumping rhythms of 1997's Vanishing Point (Sire), followed by the double-pummel of 2000's XTRMNTR (Astralwerks) and 2002's Evil Heat (Sony International), a pair of manic noise-dance thunderers offering plenty of relentless beats and howling politics. Four years later, they'd put away their sociopath-synths and traded 'em in for harmonicas and trashy riffs on the Stones/Faces homage of Riot City Blues (Columbia).

Well, that brings us up to 2006 - quite the eclectic track record for a band who had managed to collaborate with everyone from George Clinton to Kate Moss to Kevin Shields. While some have decried the endless makeovers as a variant of multiple personality disorder, I've always been of the belief that such restless "we'll try anything" spunk has long been Primal Scream's greatest asset. To my ears, the endless stylistic shifts have never felt forced or half-hearted. Equally importantly, I don't see them as running in direct conflict with each other, thanks to the level of sincerity being brought to them all.

Ultimately, I don't see frontperson Bobby Gillespie as someone particularly beholden to the idea of meeting fans' expectations. Rather, he and his mates remain committed to upholding whatever latest vision strikes their fancy. Hence, the free-love vibes of Screamadelica sit comfortably next to the terror-disco shriek of XTRMNTR - different sides of the coin, I tell myself. Thus, colon-punching rhythms and classic-rock barroom brawlers belong in the same breath - nothing unusual for Primal Scream, I nod. All in a day's work.

Which steers us back to the original question: which Primal Scream will we be hearing from this time? Well, all of those previously introduced incarnations, I suppose. Or, none of them, perhaps. I haven't completely decided, to be honest.

I will say this: Beautiful Future, as immediately familiar as it will likely appear to those who have followed the Glaswegians' career, does not feel like a latest chapter from one of the already-revealed sides of the Primal Scream personality. It does not merely pick up where Screamadelica left off, nor does it deign to submerge itself into creepier depths than those explored by the band's pre-/post-millennium triptych. While it certainly touches upon both, neither flavor comes to dominate the disc.

Instead, Beautiful Future seems bent on blending the light with the dark, the sunny with the shadowy. Here, moments of the nerve-grating unease of XTRMNTR find their way into patches of Screamadelica's bright-eyed declarations of hope. The result could maybe be described as world-weary optimism. Or is it joyous nihilism? You could call it that, too, I reckon.

If the lads have taken quick steps down this road before, then here they're having a go at a longer journey - and the results are quite enthralling. Beautiful Future might offer the most colorful electronic palette of Primal Scream's entire catalog, thanks to its rich light/dark juxtapositions, but let's not forget the guitars! With their no-nonsense rock 'n' roll touchstones - the Stones, the Faces, the Stooges, MC5, Mott the Hoople - also gallantly, gloriously on full display here, the band clearly hadn't gotten all of their yeah-yeah's out with Riot City Blues, thankfully.

Having already proven once that dirty rock 'n roll and dance music can share the same groove, Gillespie and company are back it at again, raising the platform in intriguing new ways. At times, Beautiful Future reminds me of moments on Some Girls (Virgin), the 1978 album in which the Rolling Stones didn't just recognize the ascent of disco, but instead reappropriated it, made it over as their own. Much of Primal Scream's latest could fit without a hitch in a dancefloor mix, but the firepower keeping it burning is quintessentially rock 'n' roll.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Beautiful Future has packed so many sweet-toothed melodies within its stomping, swishing grooves. In fact, one could convincingly argue that the disc is the poppiest of their career. Primal Scream have never been shy about serving up ear-catching choruses and verses, but they have frequently either piled heaps of noise upon their nightclub melodies, or stretched them out into extended jams that ultimately hand the starring role over to the rhythm rather than the notes on top.

Here, the grooves are as formidable as ever, but they are not as much of a dominating presence as has previously been the case. Also largely missing is the sprawl-factor, with only two tracks pushing beyond the five-minute mark. Instead, we have a relatively concise dance/rock crossover album that draws more of its power from songwriting-savvy than from celebrations of the bottom-end.

The opening title track, for example, flirts with power-pop idioms - look to the chugging rhythm guitar and bursts of handclaps for your answers - but reconfigures them as club-night components, setting them against a romping tempo and Gillespie's occasionally electronically-treated, free-floating vocals.

The chorus is brilliantly simple: a sustained, slow-crescendoing, crowd-rallying "whoa" followed by a bright-eyed cry of "You've got a beautiful future!" Getting to such avowals of optimism is a curious journey, however, as Gillespie tosses in references to gas chambers and electric chairs among the mentions of expensive cars and big houses. Soon enough, the sarcasm becomes clear - but Gillespie avoids any sort of moralizing tone, instead beckoning us all to join Nero at the fiddle as Rome continues to burn. Sure, the world is going to hell, he seems to say, but dancing is a mighty fine coping strategy.

Produced by Bjorn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John fame, "The Glory Of Love" is the disc's most bedazzled pop-radio moment, with its sing-song Eastern keyboard melody, haunting strings, and crisp hand claps providing new wave-flavored bounce to Gillespie's incomparable breathless sighs. Grinding away underneath are nagging grumbles of dirty synth, however, thus bringing the skinny-tie vibe into the here and now. The result brings to mind a modern makeover of Let's Dance-era David Bowie - it can't be long before the track is selected to be a single.

With its hi-hat-driven walking-pace rhythm and understated disco-fied violin shimmers, "Uptown" is Beautiful Future's indisputable summons to the dancefloor. While hardly the fastest-moving number on the disc, it swishes and saunters with a "we own these streets" authority that is equal parts cocksure bravado, lurid menace, and bleary-eyed bacchanalia.

Here. Gillespie's weary, should-have-been-in-bed-hours-ago delivery works to tremendous effect, particularly in his sighing declarations, "It's so hard/ It's so hard/ to get by in this town." Just to hammer the point home, a trio of equally breathy back-up vocalists - Victoria Bergsman (Concretes, Taken By Trees) and Swedish solo artists Ellekari Larsson and Lykke Li Zachrisson) - offer up plenty of keep-on-dancing reinforcements to the mirrorball-call.

"I Love to Hurt (You Loved to Be Hurt)" shows an indebtedness to Suicide - check the sputtering, hot-water-pipe-spitting synth-rhythm bubbling away for clues - while also offering some sassy vocal interplay between Gillespie and CSS's queen-of-sighs, Lovefoxx. "Can't Go Back" is exactly the kind of full-throated, screaming-chorus electro-garage demon-release we've come to expect from Primal Scream over the years, with the adrenaline-leaking stormer barely able to contain all of its keyboard howls and manic guitar scree without erupting into chaos. It's a trick they've pulled off countless times before, but that fact doesn't diminish the blazing raw power of the song. "Zombie Man" is probably the most overtly Stones-y offering found here, a piece of delirious honky-tonk revelry complete with swampy slide guitar and a choir of gospel-singers-gone-bad giving up plenty of divinely unbridled testimony.

Lastly, what's a Primal Scream album without a ballad? Gillespie's broken-wail lends itself to aching late-night confessionals - cue up Screamadelica's "Damaged" if you're in the need for reminding - and such tracks have also done a fine job of showing a more sensitive side to the band. This time round, the spotlight arrives with "Over and Over," a gorgeous reading of the Christine McVie-penned Fleetwood Mac song, as Gillespie duets with none other than Linda Thompson. I know, you can lower your eyebrows now! A startling pairing, certainly, but the two harmonize flawlessly, their vocals occasionally slipping and drifting around each other in languorous flutters.

Martin Duffy's spectral-soul keyboard ripples imagine Muscle Shoals transported into the heavens. Anyone who was duly seduced by the celestial twinkles of Screamadelica's "Shine Like Stars" and "Inner Flight" will be similarly wowed all over again. Special guest Barrie Cadogan (of British garage-funkers Little Barrie) weeps into his slide guitar, thus giving considerable earthly counterweight to Duffy's delicate shimmers. To top it off, Darrin Mooney (drums) and Gary Mounfield (bass) rumble out a wonderfully restrained rhythm - the combination of the elements is slowly, subtly shiver-inducing. It's probably also one of Primal Scream's finest moments, and offers further evidence that the band's restless, try-anything spirit tends to be rewarded with fascinating results.

Feast your eyes and ears on the video for "Can't Go Back," Beautiful Future's first single: