THE breakbeat rush, the phat house kicks, the token slow song, the mandatory collaborations — The Chemical Brothers are back with their fourth album, Come With Us. But don’t call it a comeback, or a return to the underground. The genre known as “dance music” comes with more limitations then any other. The synthesized sound, obscure samples, and repetitive lyrics. It’s hard to break from the mold and come up with something groundbreaking, without losing your core audience or alienating new fans along the way.
Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, the former medieval history students whose meeting at Manchester University made mixing history, never concerned themselves with the limitations of their genre.
They treated all music that came before them as a possible repertoire. With that in mind any crossover, or fusion was possible: Rap, Rock, Classical, punk, psycadellica and country (not yet explored) was theirs for the manipulating. The album starts off promisingly, with the sound of frantic violins in unison, as if Beethoven is being chased by a pack of wolves while trying to compose his tenth symphony.
The title track detonates like a bomb blast, as though the duo know that Come With Us has to be bigger and better then anything from their past.
The second track is last year’s low-key single “It Began In Africa.” Not the best effort by Tom and Ed, it starts off sounding like the Rolling Stones’s “Sympathy For The Devil” but quickly turns into a commercial ethno-techno, that sounds very over done.
The best track on the album has to be “Galaxy Bounce.” The track was released as a part of the excellent Tombraider soundtrack, and is vintage Chemical Brothers. The song features a Chic bass line and alternating drum breaks. Although, the vocals are solid but forgettable. “Star Guitar,” the duo’s last single is an odd number.
Combining a slightly tweaked house drum pattern with trance synth lines with an ambient feel, the formula here is far from original. But the songs production is close to impeccable, the secret of the duo’s success. “Hoops” is an all right track, with a guitar loop that sounds like the Stone Roses and the beats are muffled, but it somehow all fits well.
The incredible Beth Ortan lends her vocals to the albums only ballad; “The State We’re In” a good effort, but fails in comparison to her pervious collaborations with the band, most notably “Where Do I Begin” off of the Dig Your Own Hole.
“Pioneer Skies,” is an awesome production, which sounds like Pete Townshend circa his “Who’s Next” era.
The collaboration with ex-Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft is rather disappointing. The track is uneventful, and for lack of a better description “boring.”
Come With Us is not the groundbreaker that Dig Your Own Hole was, and will probably not be the hit-fest that Surrender was. It feels over-familiar and never really gets your full attention.