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Track Listings
| 1. Count Me Out |
| 2. Mr McGee |
| 3. Swing |
| 4. Everything Up [Zizou] |
| 5. Pop Art Blue |
| 6. Medicine Man |
| 7. Ghost sYMbOL |
| 8. Sleeper |
| 9. Solastalgia |
| 10. The Road |
| 11. All Of Us |
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Review
As a mission statement, second track Mr Mcgee is pretty startling: it comes across more like a Basement Jaxx stomper, with vocalist Eska Mtungwazi contributing to its infectious call-and-response structure. But then it's on to the drifting, lilting Swing, with multi-tracked harmonies that wouldn't seem out of place on an early Air track. Having two disparate styles roughly placed together, though, signals a crisis of identity rather than a master plan.
The duo's sound engineer roots come through on their sonically adventurous moments. There's plenty here to get smokers frowning, such as instrumental tidbits Count Me Out and Solastalgia, where subdued electronica tastefully entices. The aural trickery of Ghost sYMbOl, meanwhile, will have you staring round the room wondering if that's your mobile going off; but its pitch-shifted vocals are a direct lift from the less-comforting work of superior Swedish pair The Knife.
Pop Art Blue wins the vocal prize with Martha Tilston's folky whisper, though you can't help yearning for the lost voice of longtime collaborator Sia Furler. This is especially the case when Binns takes to the microphone for the first time on Zinedine Zidane homage, Everything Up (Zizou). It takes style to deliver lines like: “Murakami would have told you so / If you catch him will you let me know? / Bobbing apples in the studio / Aikido, Aikido-si-do.” Oh dear…
The evident stylistic disparity is disappointing because variety is obviously well within the boys’ grasp. Sleeper is a genuinely unsettling and vibrant slice of M.I.A.-like electro insanity, while the closing All Of Us takes its own sweet time to build from tribal bump to blissful comedown anthem, and is all the better for it.
But too much here is either unchallenging and stuck in the late 90s, or too jarring to allow the album to flow. Maybe Zero 7’s time has truly passed. --Chris Jones
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Customer Reviews
This album has real depth and introspection, and marks a very exciting new direction into the next decade. Even so, it is still Zero 7 at its core, you just have to look a bit deeper. I was quite disappointed with Air's new album, Love 2, as I really enjoyed Pocket Symphony (more so than Zero 7's The Garden) and I think they have gone backwards by trying to remake Moon Safari.
If you're wanting more of Simple Things or When It Falls then go and listen to them again. If you want to enjoy even more great music sit down and listen to this with an open mind. Those who do will be rewarded.
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