Music

As any seasoned raver can tell you, chemicals ain’t what they used to be. Without wanting to engage in too laboured a drugs metaphor, the point we’re trying to make is that Tom and Ed Chemical no longer provide the mind-bending, chest-pounding psychonautic experience that made them the country’s favourite festival band for many years running. Now, that’s not their fault –  the more technically proficient likes of punk-funkers LCD Soundsystem refined the anything-goes template which owes so much to the likes of ‘Song To The Siren’, and have merely moved dance music back toward a more song-oriented format. Still, the Bros are obviously aware that their audience has moved on, and this album shows them gamely keeping up. To get down to a fighting weight, they’ve stripped down some of the excesses of their patented industro-acid, but the men behind ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ were never cut out for subtlety. Sure, this album is all very minimal and cool (apart from the odd pill-friendly breakdown), but ultimately it’s at the expense of the anthemic, heart-in-mouth dynamics that made the Chems so thrilling in the first place. On cuts such as ‘Burst Generator’ you simply get the impression you’re listening to a much busier track through only one headphone.  

Back in the day, a Chemicals collaborations was seen as a mark of hipster cachet, but here, turns from today’s bright young things come across as a charitable visit to the old folks home. Klaxons turn in an efficient, but frankly pointless, bit of harmonising on ‘All Rights Reversed’, and sadly the Ali Love-starring single ‘Do It Again’, while catchy enough, is no match for his own recent ‘Secret Sunday Lover’.

That’ s not to say this is a bad album – Willy Mason’s turn on ‘Battle Scars’ is a standout, and the title track shows these sly old dogs can learn new tricks. But dance music is at its best when it works as a unifying, physical force, and where once the likes of ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ made you leap around like a taser’d gibbon, ‘We Are The Night’ will more likely have you nodding your head in a bobbly way as you watch them at V Festival (from a safe distance, of course).