the chemical brothers: surrender

As I write this, however, it's 7 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and I am suffering through the painful consequences of the licentiousness that the Chemicals inspire. I have a hangover, and the inside of my mouth feels like a sand-cake. I defy the Chemical Brothers to entertain me.

The Chemicals' new record is called Surrender, and most of its tracks clump together as one long straight-ahead dance number. The lead-off hitter, "Music: Response," gives a writing credit to Missy Elliott, but you'd never pick out her influence amid the thump. For the first and last thirds of the album, beats, keyboard breaks, and occasional vocals pass in and out of the mix without leaving an impression. The Chemicals come across as little kids with too many toys, never sticking with a theme long enough to see it through or take us through any kind of catharsis. The music is postmodern in the worst way: good hooks get no more airtime than bad ones. It's a collage without a filter.

Not to say that the middle of the record doesn't have some great moments. "The Sunshine Underground" lifts the veil of club claustrophobia and delivers an eight-minute-long would-be slow jam that, on this particular morning, just happens to match the rate of the blood pulsing in my temples. Tragically, it switches to double-time halfway through and ends up as just another dance track. Surrender's real knockout is "Asleep from Day," featuring Hope Sandoval. One of the simplest, spaciest, and sexiest songs of the early '90s was Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You," which Sandoval sang like a void incarnate, delivering the tumbling lyric, "I look at you and I see / Nothing." Well, the chick has still got it. On this new track, she sings me into a trance, backed with Sinead O'Connor-esque keys. If Sandoval's voice were higher, the track could indeed pass for O'Connor's definitive brand of early '90s white R&B.

Call me a pop-music conservative and I won't press charges, but I maintain that the Chemicals do their best work when the tempos are slow and their debt to rock history is made manifest. Innovators? Don't make me laugh. The work that U2 has done in the past 10 years has been much more exciting, if no longer in vogue. In fact, the very fashionable Chemicals seem to lift a good deal from U2. "Out of Control" could be an outtake from Zooropa, banished to the trash bin for having no chord changes, and "Hey Boy Hey Girl" seems little more than a tame reworking of "Discotheque."

The Chemicals still make very good party music. But the real innovating goes on elsewhere: in the twisted tales of Kool Keith, in the still-stunning guitar heroics of Sonic Youth, and in the hands of basement turntablists across the globe. As an album, i.e., the kind of thing you'd sit down and listen to start to finish, Surrender is a snoozer. A few soothing moments of beautiful pop notwithstanding, it ain't no cure for a hangover neither. (VIR)

—Abraham Levitan

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