The Dance

Listening to a Faithless album inevitably feels like panning for gold; although your patience gets stretched as you find the same mud again and again, the glint of gold always makes it worth the time spent scratching through the dirt.

If for nothing else, the track ‘Feel Me’ is worth listening to for the comedy stylings of Lancashire-born Neil Arthur, the lead singer from Blancmange, trying to keep up with Maxi Jazz’s South London vernacular. The lyrical repetition of ‘feel me, now!’ sounds like abusive instructions to the kitchen boy as the song drowns in a tragic clash of cultural strata. However, this is excellently repaired by another collaboration, this time with Johnny Fox from The King Blues; the two revolutionaries from the ‘wrong end’ of town freestyling to a classic reggae beat in ‘Crazy Bal’heads’. The characteristically languid faithless bass lends itself perfectly to a slower, thumping beat merging electronica with reggae and a trace of new age punk.

Throughout there are glimmers of Maxi’s quasi-messianic poetic style, exemplified in his opening lyrics to the track ‘Comin Around’, continuing some of the sheer cool-factor from previous hits ‘Insomnia’ and ‘We Come 1’, nevertheless it seems that this album is restricted to mere glimmers, as yet another guest artist takes over vocals and returns the track to standard dance electronica. When Faithless perform without a guest artist you hear Maxi’s lyrical prowess return to former glories combining nihilistic tales of urban bohemia with trance-style climaxes reminiscent of Goldfrapp or Massive Attack in their glory days.

Dido’s fleeting return to collaboration with Faithless adds a curious flavour to the album, her two contributions are the closest the album feels to great anthemic tunes that the album so desperately lacks. ‘Feelin Good’ seems to be begging for a club remix before it can reach more popular appeal with its fluxing and whining synth sounds and repetitive vocal themes while ‘North Star’ is smothered by its own enigmatic and uncompelling inanity. With this the latter half of the album loses some of its energy and its attempts to recapture its appeal of days gone by pass with little success.

After a four year hiatus, Faithless’ return with a new progression in their musical style is on paper a delight. But from one of the best live acts in the country, and giants of their genre, fans expect so much more. For once the hour and a half raking through the muck isn’t quite worth the glimmers of gold. It is, unfortunately, a waste of time and money. Best advice: sit tight, and wait for a new album.