New horizons
The Chemical Brothers step forward
BY MICHAEL ENDELMAN
In the 10 years since the Chemical Brothers burst out of Manchester with "Song
to the Siren," Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons have been hailed as one of the most
important groups of our era. Electronic-music pioneers, technological
innovators, cross-genre bridge builders -- the accolades have piled up like
Grammy Awards on Quincy Jones's mantel.
Still, the release of their fourth album, Come with Us (Astralwerks),
suggests that all may not be well with the Brothers. "Could it be that I'm just
losing my touch?", New Order's Bernard Sumner wondered on "Out of Control," the
first single from the Chemical Brothers' previous album, 1999's Surrender
(Astralwerks). The answer, to guess from that disc's sales figures (it
didn't crack the half-million mark), might be a resounding yes. Over the past
two years the Brothers have watched their groundbreaking big-beat sound become
car-commercial fodder.
But Soundscan numbers rarely tell the whole story. Although the Brothers' sales
figures and their pop-culture profile have decreased somewhat since 1997's
Dig Your Own Hole went gold and "Block Rockin' Beats" became a catch
phrase, their style of musicmaking has become increasingly prevalent. Dig
Your Own Hole's "Setting Sun" owed a major debt to the Brill Building and
its collection of pro songwriters, musicians, and arrangers, who ruled pop
music in the pre-Beatles era. Like a postmodern version of those buttoned-down
Tin Pan Alley publishers, the Brothers (with the help of racks of digital
equipment) were responsible for every aspect of their music's creation from the
ground up -- from writing, arranging, and performing the song to recording and
producing the results. The singing, however, was farmed out to pretty faces
like Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher (who was the voice of "Setting Sun"). It's a
division of labor that was the norm before the Beatles came along and made
writing one's own songs the mark of an artist's integrity.
Throughout their career the Brothers have maintained this MO -- after all,
Rowlands and Simons can't carry a tune, and big-name cameos help album sales.
But though they weren't the first or the only group to marry the egoless realm
of rave music to the ego-driven world of mainstream pop, the Brothers'
collaboration with Gallagher turned the celebrity-studded electronica album
into a cliché of sorts. (See Fatboy Slim's Halfway Between the Gutter
and the Stars, BT's Movement in Still Life, and Crystal Method's
Tweekend for evidence.) One could even argue that with his cameo-bloated
mega-comeback Supernatural (Arista), Carlos Santana was simply applying
the Chemical Brothers' strategy to a more trad-rock context.
Unfortunately, Supernatural also turned what, in the Chemical Brothers'
hands, had been quirky, one-off collaborations into a committee-produced,
market-driven product. And maybe that's why Come with Us feels so
reactionary. Yes, it has the requisite vocal tracks, but there are only two
guests (Beth Orton and former Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft) compared with
Surrender's five. And Orton's drippy "The State We're In" and Ashcroft's
melodramatic "The Test" are the two weakest tracks -- they sound more like
record-label obligations than artistic inspirations. It's as if the Brothers
were shedding an old skin -- the trippy electro-pop, piston-pumping big-beat
throwdowns, and rave-rock collaborations of the past are MIA -- in search of a
new look.
That's not to say that Come with Us doesn't sound like the Chemical
Brothers. The duo's distinctive traits -- tactile, 3-D sound textures,
throttling funk loops, hooky vocal drops, roller-coaster build-and-release
arrangements -- are still in evidence. What's gone is the extreme
My-Bloody-Valentine-meets-Mantronix frequency abuse of Dig Your Hole;
the Brothers' psychedelic tendencies appear to have taken a utopian turn --
less Ecstasy and more Echinacea is my guess. The result fuses trance's ethereal
drive with funk's earthy grit, big beat's cut-and-paste tactics with techno's
uplifting ride, deep house's pan-African polyrhythms with acid house's funhouse
tweaks.
Singling out a pinnacle moment is difficult, since this album has the
consistent and cohesive single-minded flow of a self-assured mix CD. Its
commercial potential, however, seems limited. No frat-boy anthems or obvious
singles here, just kaleidoscopic dance tracks blooming with vivid colors and
intricate textures. In other words, this is a confident and mature step forward
for the Chemicals. The real question is, are their fans ready to follow?
Issue Date: February 8 - 14, 2002
|