So, I picked up the new Chemical Brothers album, Come With Us and have been forced to pontificate the following Koan: Is it possible for these guys to make an album that doesn’t rule? Evidence to this point seems to indicate HELL NO!! (Okay, so it’s not really a Koan, but it made me sound smart. Shut up.) They’re four-for-four(oooo, that sounds like “444”!) at the moment and seem to show no signs of slowing down. If anything, they’re just picking up steam.
On Come With Us they continue to hone their skills and their sound has fermented, for lack of a better word, into a truly masterful cacophony of electronic ‘noise.’ As usual, their versatility amazes me; they can knock you over the head with some hardcore techno beats, like It Came From Afrika and Galaxy Bounce, which are, in true Chemical Brothers style, sprinkled with samples of real-world noises taken from only-God-and-the Chemical Brothers-knows-where, then they can turn around and make a beautiful, slow track like The State We’re In with the kind of building momentum and inspiration that makes for great early-morning, I’ve-just-woken-up listening. I can’t name too many techno artists capable of making the claim that they can make tracks as soft as they can hard (although Underworld springs to mind).
In any case, if you’ve ever liked a Chemical Brothers song, or even a techno song for that matter, Come With Us comes highly recommended by little ol’ me. (And Todd, if you don’t have it yet, I’m telling you now to go get it!! I owe you for Crystal Method.)
Now that that’s over with, let’s head back to those fearful waters of relevancy…