The Chemical Brothers - Brotherhood

by Eddie Robson

Do it again! Regardless of whether it's necessary!

"Didn’t The Chemical Brothers release a Best Of five years ago? And surely nothing they’ve done in the interim has set the world alight in a way that warrants an updated compilation?"

Eh? Didn’t The Chemical Brothers release a Best Of five years ago? And surely nothing they’ve done in the interim has set the world alight in a way that warrants an updated compilation?

Yes! All of this is true. But they’ve actually been doing pretty well in America, with both of their last two albums bagging Grammys for Best Electronic/Dance Album (which is definitely among the forty or fifty most important Grammy categories), and so ‘Brotherhood’ seems to be an exercise in introducing the American market to the band’s back catalogue.

To make it more worthwhile for the rest of the world, a Special Edition of the album contains a second disc, compiling all ten of the Brothers’ coveted ‘Electronic Battle Weapons’ tracks. These early mixes of Chems tracks were released as promos for DJs to floor-test in very limited quantities and are much sought after by fans of the group… precisely the sort of people who will own all the tracks on the Best Of disc, so forcing them to buy an expensive double-disc set seems a bit harsh. Oh, and we haven’t been sent the Special Edition to review. We’ve just got the bog standard disc. So we can’t tell you anything about the more exciting part of this release. Sorry.

The two differences between ‘Brotherhood’ and the previous Chems Best Of, ‘Singles 1993-2003’, are (a) four tracks have been dropped and replaced with two each from ‘Push the Button’ and ‘We Are the Night’, plus one new one and (b) that album was chronological and this one isn’t. Bafflingly ‘Saturate’, the only track on here which wasn’t released as a single, has made the cut ahead of ‘The Salmon Dance’, which was and furthermore is the best thing the Chems have done in years. If this compilation is indeed aimed at the American market, it would seem blindingly obvious to include a track that features a well-known American rapper.

Anyway, enough bitching about the line-up – let’s talk a bit about the music. Mingling their tracks together like this demonstrates that The Chemical Brothers are actually roughly as good as they always were: they’re simply in that awkward position of having been on the edge of the zeitgeist just over a decade ago. Things have a tendency to seem at their most dated when they are fifteen years old, and the Chems are just entering that point. All things considered, they are therefore doing bloody well commercially (‘We Are the Night’ got to Number One) and pretty well critically – especially compared to their peers, who are largely nowhere these days.

‘Leave Home’ and the great ‘Setting Sun’ remain key tracks of their era, but it’s material from ‘Surrender’ that stands up best, shucking off Big Beat to fashion a new vision of dark psychedelic disco. ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’ seems dumb but is actually brilliantly multilayered, whilst ‘Out of Control’ sees the Chems returning to their well-thumbed copy of ‘101 Uses For the I Feel Love Bassline’ (NB: joke nicked from Select magazine c.1999, not that they’re around to complain any more). The ‘Come With Us’ album led them up a blind alley but ‘Galvanize’ proved they hadn’t run out of ideas and the newie here, ‘Keep My Composure’, is good stuff: they only have to hang in there a little longer and their time will come again.
Jonson Walker said on August 5th 2008 [report abuse]

That review was laughable, anyone that counts the salmon dance as the best thing the chem's have done in years is clinically insane. Whilst i admit that another best of after just a further two albums is bafflingly cash grabbing but there hasn't been anyone like them really before or since. I bought Exit Planet Dust when I was 15 and subsequently own all their other albums and hordes of their 12s, I never for one minute thought they were going to soundtrack my life in quite the way they have.

Neil Taylor said on August 13th 2008 [report abuse]

Jonson Walker's comment is the only thing worth reading here. Introducing the US to the pick of their back catalogue increase both their popularity and sales of said back catalogue, seems like pretty basic common sense to me. And as for sounding dated, it might help to hear these 15 year old tracks live again - your opinion may be somewhat different. But to conclude, including the Battle Weapons tracks makes this 1 of the most eagerly anticipated albums that the Chems have ever released.

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