It must be said that upon being given 'the new Jamiroquai album' to review this writer felt a certain sense of trepidation. After all, how can any self-respecting music fan find a way to take seriously the work of JK, a man synonymous with some of the worst excesses of 90s culture - fast cars, celebrity relationships, a blizzard of cocaine - and perhaps even more criminally, white man funk (or acid jazz if you prefer)? He even had his own tabloid moniker as The Prat In The Hat.
First things first, as an album Automaton is completely all over the place. As the name would suggest, 'the future' looms large in its themes, ironic for a man rooted in 1997 in the nation's cultural subconscious. The video for the title track (and lead-off single) reinforces that the band have climbed aboard the dystopian bandwagon, as well as clearly listening to a lot of Justice and Simian Mobile Disco records. It's actually pretty ace, even excusing the sub-Sugarhill Gang 'rap' towards the end.
The album starts in a similarly futuristic vein, albeit a late 70s disco version of what the future was supposed to be like. Opener Shake It On invokes memories of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, the gist being that we're having a Boogie Wonderland on a spaceship. Even the closing refrain of "gonna be a freak tonight" is just a whisker away from telling us to "lose ourselves to dance". Cloud 9 puts us firmly back in familiar soul boy territory, the band clearly more in their comfort zone and the most obvious 'single' on here (you can see it being a live favourite). The distorted robot vocals and sudden tempo changes continue to throw the listener around, even if the likes of Superfresh sound like someone tampering with the playing speed of a Boney M LP.
Meanwhile, it's clear that with song titles like 'Superfresh', 'Hot Property' and 'Summer Girl' (basically the same tune as Cosmic Girl from 20 years ago with added clunky lyrics about "legs like liquid honey"), it's not just the music that's rooted in a bygone age - you get the feeling a song called 'My Car Drives Very Fast' was perilously close to making the cut.
'Nights Out In The Jungle' turns the vibe from disco to hip-hop (i.e. a bit of record scratching) with a pretty great baseline to be fair, although the continuing spaceship noises do make you wonder what sort of jungle this might be. However, with most tracks clocking in around the 4-5 minute mark and some even more, the whole thing is starting to feel like a bit of a slog by this point.
The trick is of course to remember that it wasn't always thus. Whisper it quietly, but the first couple of Jamiroquai albums were pretty good records; Emergency On Planet Earth sounds like a Stevie Wonder album (post-peak admittedly) in parts, whilst other influences such as Sly & The Family Stone and even Earth, Wind & Fire loom large. There was however always the lingering suspicion that although the band were able to replicate those sounds and grooves, it mostly felt like an approximation of the real thing. Thinking about it, it stands to reason that the band were big in the '90s, a decade that perfected 'imitation as a form of flattery' to a fine art.
All in all, Automaton comes across as a musical equivalent of Jimmy's Spices, one of those buffet-style restaurants where you get all types of cuisine in the one place - lots of variety and choice to explore but lacking a little in substance and potentially leaving you feeling a little bit sick.
