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From a British commercial radio perspective, Jamiroquai are a chart
topping pop-funk group with a knack for keeping things interesting while
still staying hugely successful. From an American perspective, they're
just the band who did that Virtual Insanity song. No group better
represents the curious schism of pop taste better than the Atlantic
barrier between Jamiroquai and international stadium tours. They seem
to do everything right (the hooks, the looks), but Europe has been
their hearth throughout their careers - odd for a band who welcome
plenty of American musical traditions in their music.
Rock Dust Light Star is the group's first album in seven years, and
follows a historic run of seven Top 5 albums in a surprisingly
venerable 17 years. In what could be considered a sort of
retrospection after a five year hiatus, it embraces the funk and soul
vibes of early Jamiroquai work rather than the electro textures that
followed the band into the new millennium. And as you'd probably
expect, they've lost any of their innate pop-making abilities
- smoothed-out adult contemporary ballads that you can enjoy as much
as you're willing to disarm yourself to their relative unhipness.
Despite the hate Jamiroquai will continually get, at this point in
their career it's quite hard to pretend they aren't good at what they
do; that silky, jazz-funk thing is back again on Rock Dust
Light Star, which is not a radical departure from what went before, but they're
so good at it you can't help but
give them some respect. You're not going to hear a song more
universally danceable - at a wedding reception - than Lifeline or White Knuckle Ride all year.
It's almost rather insidious how perrenial hat-wearer Jay Kay can turn something
as notoriously disdained as 'white guy soul' into something so
charismatically lovable. Jamiroquai have
walked that line perfectly, and the songs on Rock Dust Light Star
require a sustained effort to dislike. It's designed from the ground
up to worm inside your brain and beat your pleasure centres
silly.
It's not album of the year by any means, but it might
have been just long enough between Jamiroquai releases that Rock Dust
Light Star sounds refreshing, euphoric, and simply exciting all over
again. The songs are all ridiculously polished, and as well-written as
any of the best tracks as anything in the band's catalogue.
The only thing holding the record back from being
truly great is if you have a preternatural urge to punch Jay Kay (we hear some people suffer so)
or a misguided aversion to well-crafted pop. If
it's the latter, you're not listening to music the right way.
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