Woah! It’s a new [a]Luscious Jackson[/a] album! Yeeee-haw! Can I get a witness?! Are you ready to ROCK?! I can’t hear you!! I said…
Oh, actually, I [I]can’t [/I]hear you…
There’s something about [a]Luscious Jackson[/a] that never quite gets you going. They’ve always been stylish, classy, never a note out of place, ultra cool, with the right friends, right look, right label, but never quite enough vibes, content to make cool background music for a modern bar ambience. OK, let’s face it, ever so slightly dull. And furthermore you always wondered whether there was a soul beneath that sultry sly chic.
The search continues on this fourth album, and initial signs are promising. That characteristically dense urban sound seems to have shifted out to the suburbs of late, let itself go, stopped being uptight and broadened its horizons.
‘Christine’ echoes Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’ with a breakbeat but then breaks out into a haunting, swoonsome chorus. Elsewhere, ‘Nervous Breakthrough’ is celebratory, horny funk. Christ, at times you even feel like dancing.
For all their pop edge, though, the tune return quotient tails off alarmingly halfway through, and once again that nagging suspicion returns that [a]Luscious Jackson[/a] make fine-sounding records but few memorable songs. And yet you sense how good they could be, but if Luscious is ever going to be more than a cool name, they’re going to need more spice.