THE PRODIGY
Experience Expanded / Music For The Jilted Generation Expanded
XL Recordings
It’s two albums for the price of one this month as XL re-release two
iconic albums from their back catalogue. A decade on from the year in which
The Prodigy could justifiably claim to be the biggest band in the world, it’s
time to re-evaluate the two albums which laid the foundations for that position.
Experience is their debut, a collection of rave anthems rather than an album
as such, and it was Jilted Generation which nailed down their musical style
in a coherent way.
To deal with Experience first, anybody growing up in early 1990s watching the
Chart Show will be familiar with the squeaky keyboard wobbles, chiming whistles
and bells and cartoon vocals of tracks such as Charly, Everybody In The Place,
Fire and Jericho. It barely suggests their subsequent rock mentality, but at
least packs a huge energetic punch with its clattering percussion and 120bpm
danceability. The stand-out track is Out Of Place with its Max Romeo sample
and ska-rave genre mashing. With a lot of filling (Ruff In The Jungle Bizness,
Your Love) it’s best to cherry-pick the singles for your iPod. The bonus
CD offers the ponderous Your Love and the superfluous Alley Cat Remix of Charly,
but it does also give us the glitchy Android with its Fisher Price rave stylings.
By contrast, Jilted Generation marks the point at which Liam Howlett moulded
his sound to the live band dynamic - with the most success of all the dance
crossover acts of the time. The album forms a dynamic, controlled whole with
easy transition from menacing album tracks like Break & Enter into guitar-laden
singles like Their Law.
They were still dance but suddenly they were playing with rock sounds and aesthetics
(witness the video to Voodoo People). The bonus CD offers interesting but not
essential remixes and BBC sessions, but it does include their best b-side,
Scienide, and the Voodoo People remix by the Dust Brothers, soon to become
the Chemical Brothers. It’s an absolute monster. Jilted Generation is
packed full of singles but this time there’s no filler, just a unified
whole of crunching, squelching post-rave that put The Prodigy on the path to
dominance.
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK
The Block
Interscope
Comeback alert! Although Take That’s recent comeback has been spectacular
in its success, it’s worth bearing in mind that the Spice Girls’ and
Boyzone’s efforts have been less impressive. So, with success on the nostalgia
circuit by no means guaranteed, what to make of these 30-somethings coming back
almost 20 years after their heyday? What we get here is a slick R’n’B
album with a bit of lowest common denominator rap thrown in. There’s the
impression that a certain ‘maturity’ has been created so as not to
alienate their middle-aged housewife fanbase but there’s precious little
to excite.
I was wondering if post-Backstreet /N-Sync there might be some of that epic production
trickery going on. But the nearest the fivesome gets is having their vocals chucked
through a vocoder; it’s frankly horrible. Even if you think your wife or
girlf might like to relive her youth with a bit of nostalgia, leave The Block
well alone. Buy her some Black Magic and a Babycham instead – you're far
more likely to get lucky that way.
MILEY CYRUS
Breakout
Hollywood Records
It’s so easy to find yourself being inadvertently misogynistic. Just watch
telly for an hour and you’re confronted with ads for our own Duffy, Hilary
Duff, Bovril Latrine, Sandi Thom, Beth Rowley, Gabriella Cilmi, Amy Macdonald,
Sara Bareilles and so on and on… ‘For goodness sake, who are these
women and why do they all sound the same?’ comes the scream at the TV set.
Well, don’t blame them. It’s a fad. Music goes in cycles and at the
moment it’s the turn of earnest but pretty women with guitars and pianos
singing emotive tunes about important things that, yes, all sound pretty much
the same. Miley Cyrus in this case also has a television career as something
called Hannah Montana and is younger than Nirvana’s Nevermind. Scary. Her
songwriters have supplied her with some important-sounding emotive guitar and
piano numbers (of course) and then when the ideas ran out they introduced her
to Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun. Quite frankly she might
only be 16 and have pipes yet to be destroyed by the bad habits it’s hoped
she develops to annoy her Disney paymasters, but she’s surplus to requirements.
Oh if your kids know what Hannah Montana is, you should be ashamed of your parenting
skills.
THE AUTOMATIC
This Is A Fix
B Unique
So livewire keyboardist Pennie has left and the Cowbridge foursome are back,
now with ex-Yourcodenameis:milo frontman Paul Mullen in the fold. And the results
are very impressive. Responsible Citizen kicks off, showcasing a fuller sound,
then the point is rammed home with lead single Steve McQueen. The Automatic have
gone ‘rock’ and shorn themselves of the slightly kitsch (almost novelty?)
element that saw them score a number three hit with Monster. Instead, we get
a more mature song-writing style that takes longer to break down but is actually
more rewarding. Magazines recalls a bit of Panic! At The Disco and there’s
certainly a lot more influence from American indie/punk this time round. Whether
this is due to personnel change or a concerted attempt to break the US market
is yet to be seen, but the shift is smooth. While there are no chart-smashing
stand-outs, This Is A Fix really hits the mark with a more mature style.
James McLaren has slipped a few discs