January 11, 2001

Fatboy Slim Featuring Macy Gray : Demons

Mmm, yeah, like [I]soul music[/I]. Isn't it?

Mmm, yeah, like soul music. Isn't it? There are gorgeous post-coital piano loops, gospel blatherings, real live instrument things like tambourines, and mad mad Macy Gray hollering and rasping about how she's, er, "comfy like a cesspool". Yeah, you think, all Norm needs to do now is add a crunchy yet tender breakbeat and this ought to have us all gasping smoky come-ons into the ears of people we've only just met.

And yet... fuck, this is so boring. Like his whole 'Halfway Between The Gutter And The
Stars' record, it just doesn't work,
it never kicks into life, it just, y'know, lopes around. A bit like 'Praise You' loped around, but
then 'Praise You' went guh-guh-guh-guh and skyrocketed into a shameless breakbeat galaxy. Whereas 'Demons' just, er, carries on down a distinctly earthly freeway towards some faux-Harlem church where Norm's presiding over the big beat funeral and pretending that he never made dumb party music. Lordy, what
a waste.

Christian Ward