The Chemical Brothers - Come With Us (Astralwerks, 2002)
Daft Punk were once described as "toeing the line between stupid and clever," and I think the same thing can very accurately be said about the Chemical Brothers. For example, I can't think of a dorkier way to start a song than by sampling an "academic" voice intoning the words "it began in Africa," and then looping the "ka" syllable repeatedly. But when that track, after about five minutes of rather inane build-up including the obligatory talking drums and djembes, suddenly turns on its head and introduces a syncopated hip-hop breakbeat, I start to think that techno artists should be doing this sort of thing more often. The track I'm describing is "It Began in Afrika" (note clever/stupid spelling), the second cut on the Brothers' new album, which was probably the most keenly awaited electronica release since Daft Punk's Discovery dropped last year. (Okay, I want to stop making comparisons with Daft Punk right now. Come to think of it, the two groups have an awful lot in common - both are idiosyncratic European duos who were largely responsible for turning the world onto electronica back in 1997, with two of the most infectious techno hits ever, and have since had marginal success reclaiming their groundbreaking status - but that's not what I want to talk about.)

It's more or less universally acknowledged that the Chemical Brothers reached their peak with 1997's bombastic Dig Your Own Hole, which featured not only the inescapable "Block Rockin' Beats," and a guest vocal from heavenly-voiced relative unknown (and cutie) Beth Orton, but at least a half album's worth of some of the most bizarre and abstract music that could possibly be construed as funk. Those successful elements of bombast, rock swagger, guest vocalists, and "experimentalism" (probably more like screwing around) were harbinged on their debut, "Exit Planet Dust," somewhat controversially recombined for the difficult third album "Surrender," and, unsurprisingly, reappear here. And, this time at least, they work. Not in the way they used to work. The Chemical Brothers are no longer groundbreaking, and in its weaker moments this record almost feels like nostalgia. This time around it's more like i've-heard-this-all-before-and-it-still-sounds-damn-good. Of course, they do have a few new tricks to show off. Like, well, Daft Punk, they have taken note of more recent trends in dance music, as is evident in the streamlined, glossy house of "Star Guitar" (one of the most infectious cuts here, for all its Darude-cribbing). If anything, Come With Us is more varied sonically than any of their previous efforts, from the dark and tumultuous celli that open the album to gentle Spanish-y guitar line suddenly morphing into dark electro-funk (on the nifty "Hoops") to what sounds like a demented music box tinkling away in "My Elastic Eye." Even when things start to sound awfully hackneyed, there are enough ideas percolating in the mix to keep them interesting. The Brothers made some questionable decisions on this one, like submerging a pretty little Beth Orton melody in swaths of muddy knob-twiddling and burbles, and allowing the annoyingingly earnest Richard Ashcroft vocal about acid tests to mix with a recycled but workable funk loop, creating the danceable but ultimately rather inane closer "The Test." And, unavoidably, a handful of cuts in the album's second half don't quite make the mark. But the Chemical Brothers were never perfectionists. Their genius, it seems to me, has always come from goofing around and coming up with entertaining (and occasionally sublime) pieces of music - songs, even. And, in a way, they've never done that more successfully than here - this album doesn't want for humor, versatility, or flavor. All it lacks, maybe, is a bit of the freshness that made them seem so revolutionary back in 1997. (7/10)