Chemical Brothers Miss The Goldilocks Zone

Having made the mistake of taking a general critics’ consensus on electro-pioneers The Chemical Brothers’ new album, one could easily fall under the impression that Further is an evolutionary leap of sonic genius that eschews hit ambition for understated artistic brilliance.

Allow me to dispel the hyperbolic facade put forth by my contemporaries: Further isn’t just a departure of form from the commercial-fodder candyflip-frenzy soundtracks of old – it’s the undeniable sound of artistic middleground, an effort to find a goldilocks zone between the fire of youth and the enlightenment of age. With more time in the cooker they may have been on to something remarkable, but as it stands, Further is disappointingly mediocre.

Tom Rowlands’ and Ed Simons’ attempts to trump quantity with quality slips and tends to fall on the glowsticks they’ve left behind. The psychedelic club-bangers of old are entirely absent, the energy of Galvanize replaced by sweeping echo effects and 12-minute Ibiza beats over the sounds of alien spaceships taking off.

Further ebbs and flows like a quiet tide, waves never rising to the level of captivation their previous works have offered yet pulling from the same pools of synth loops, compressed breakbeats and distorted instrumentation. Expansive and cinematic, the album is an experiment in the subdued, a departure from the formula of 2005’s Push the Button and 2007’s We Are the Night - both of which were disastrous attempts to find a middleground between progressive ambition and reliance on their tried-and-true signature beat frenzy.

Opener Snow has no drums at all, rather simply pulsing outward as female voices repeat the phrase “Your love keeps lifting me, lifting me higher,” over a feedback buzz that’s positively grating on the patience, as we await a payoff that never arrives. Stacked vintage synths slowly rise, leaning a little too close to the arpeggio intro of Baba O’Riley before hitting a stride that finally gets the album moving on Escape Velocity.

Still, even on their worst days Rowlands and Simons are a formidable atmospheric force. There’s a sunrise beauty to Another World, but ultimately it’s all ethereal glitter and mirrors as the song fails to lift off from its aliens-on-ecstasy base. Dissolve, by contrast, shows promise with magnetic percussion and rock-buzz guitars, but where’s the meat? Where’s the payoff hook that delivers the inarguable punch we’ve come to know and love? It simply doesn’t exist.

You’ll have to forgive the horse-whinny sample and nn-tiss techno vibe of Horse Power that Snooki and her greaseball compatriots will undoubtedly be pumping fists to throughout the remainder of the summer, because that’s as good as it’s going to get.

The album was reportedly conceived to accompany digital films, but as far as the listener is concerned, that explanation arrives as more of an excuse for a half-assed album that doesn’t stir the soul, doesn’t push the boundaries and ultimately falls short of our hopes for what the Chemical Brothers are capable of.