The Chemical Brothers
We Are The Night

THE REVIEW

A career like that of the Chemical Brothers speaks for itself.

Heralds of a "trend" that disappeared into a black hole in just a few years, the Big Beat so praised in the post-Madchester nineties, they managed to stay afloat even in our twenty-first century thanks to a faithful following of fans, but especially due to irresistibly danceable and decidedly devastating live sets.

"Push The Button," released in 2005, left behind the usual trail of commercial success, but also just as many perplexities regarding a musical offering that seems, at best, decently constructed but static and rather cold. It’s futile to search for new gems like "Surrender" or "Dig Your Own Hole"; it would be unfair, after all, we are talking about a duo with a career spanning over a decade. And, to confirm, the "chemical brothers," twelve years after "Exit Planet Dust," release this "We Are The Night" (a truly tacky title, it must be said), which neither detracts nor adds to the post-Surrender production of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons.

The single that took on the responsibility of presenting the work is the overexposed "Do It Again", one of the six features on the record (with Ali Love, who will release his debut album in November); the rhythm is simple and repetitive, as often happens in the production of the British duo, and the track turns out to be a good dancefloor tune, descending more and more into the "street" as you listen to it (the album version is recommended, certainly not the shortened one aired on the radio). The second hit extracted from the new full-length is the fun "The Salmon Dance" (another collaboration, this time with Fatlip, a hip-hop artist from Los Angeles); if the "Finding Nemo" style video clip is quite cute, the song is a kind of simple nursery rhyme, pleasant and nothing more. The most anticipated feature was certainly with the nu-ravers Klaxons, that is, "All Rights Reversed", which turns out to be a decent track played on the interplay between the choruses and the sung parts, all laid on the usual rhythmic and danceable carpet.

The title track, placed immediately after the funereal intro "No Path To Follow", brings to mind "Believe" from "Push The Button," stuffing it with "video game" effects and adding a sample from the old "The Sunshine Underground". The pounding "Saturate" is also good, placed halfway between a frantic and blatantly "rock" drum (allow me the cliché) and a storm of hypnotic electronic beats. Bad is "Das Spiegel", cold and monotonous, as if rolled up on itself. There is no shortage of a nice couple of complex electronic smoothies ("A Modern Midnight Conversation" and, especially, "Burst Generator") and the hypnotic and minimal electro-pop of "Battle Scars" (featuring the very young—twenty-two years old—American singer-songwriter Willy Mason). The closure, after a perfectly useless "Harpoons", is entrusted to a little gem such as "The Pills Won't Help You Now" which, starting from mournful and subdued atmospheres, accelerates towards an ending with orchestral and electronic sounds (in "cohabitation" with the Midlake, a progressive band from Texas).

Asking for revolutions from the Bros. of the 2000s is frankly quite difficult; however, there are noticeable improvements compared to the weak predecessor, mostly in terms of sound production (much less "monochromatic") rather than the quality of individual tracks (apart from occasional exceptions), which remains somewhat stuck at a stretched sufficiency.

It is up to the listener to judge whether the "chemical duo" should continue on this path, or draw the curtain after this (dignified and nothing more) new album.