Get your shag rug and big fuzzy dice out before you drop Jamiroquai in your 8-track. The disco/Stevie Wonder vibe is running around this disc so fast that not even your hot pants will be able to keep up.
Jay Kay’s voice is remarkable. This white boy has as much soul as any R&B artist does in music today. “Canned Heat”, the first single, is high octane and sure to make your body sweat. It keeps up the hip-shaking pace from beginning to end, but really may have been a bad choice as being track one. The entire album can’t hold up to this maniacal tempo; most of the album seems to just fall off and crumble under its precedent.
“Planet Home” is perky and funky, yet it pales beside the fire that “Canned Heat” lit. Now “Black Capricorn Day”, that is a world all its own. It takes you to a place where you can close your eyes and do nothing but feel the sunshine warm your shoulders and dance through your hair. A place where the breeze tickles your soul while your outstretched arms reach to the sky as you holler ‘hey’ over and over again without begging for an answer. So do you still think Lenny Kravitz is the reincarnate of the seventies? Think again.
Jamiroquai breaks out with a slow jam on “Falling”. It sounds nice, but it just doesn’t go anywhere. It’s aimless. But talk about seriously aimless, “Destitute Illusion” is an electro track that builds a bridge out of cards and flaps flimsily in my ear. What a waste to put an instrumental track on an album that already has only ten songs. Jay Kay’s voice is way too sweet not to use. I’d rather have him sing nonsense than listen to this crap.
“Supersonic” doesn’t live up to its name. Big, thick beats break down your exterior while a mysterious voice floats around the rhythm, whispering ‘supersonic’. But once again, too much instrumental, not enough Jay. It’s hard to believe that Jamiroquai are going to try to get away with this. People are going to buy the album to hear Jay sing, not to hear how cool the beats may be. They’d buy the Chemical Brothers if they were looking for that.
Tracks five through eight are exhausting. And the sleepiness they induce has nothing to do with excitement.
“Where Do We Go From Here” starts to pick it up again. The clunking on the keys breaks through your slumber. “King For A Day” is the real dream scene. The discordant piano seems to take on Jay Kay in a battle between good and evil. Jay charges on and on as the strings fight for their chance to shine, but Jay doesn’t allow himself to be outdone.
The down side to all of this is that the album only contains ten songs and one of those is an instrumental. That is damn sparse for a full-length disc. Even though it boasts five above average songs, there just isn’t enough here to make this disc a must buy. I don’t know why ten songs were all that made it onto this disc, but it’s a huge let down.
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