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With each new album, the Chemical Brothers don't reinvent the wheel so much as rotate the tires. None of their studio albums, including Come With Us, their fourth, have been dramatically different, sonically, from one another - they're all furious sets of wired rhythms and sasquatch kick drums. That said, the slowly blooming "Star Guitar," wherein a dreamy melody hatches from an array of Ritalin beats, is evidence of a band that is increasingly drawn to disorientingly lush tunes rather than to mere adrenaline anthems. Likewise, "Hoops,"... Read More lit up with a shimmering double helix of acoustic guitar, is twisted psychedelia that is more strangely beautiful than the Eighties work of the Butthole Surfers. It's not that Come With Us doesn't rock like a jet engine in a jewel case - it does - but it's more striking for the moments when a warped loveliness, like the icy, phased harpsichord gusts of "Pioneer Skies," wafts up and out from among the roar of the sirens and sequencers. The album title itself is a little ironic, though: The Chemical Brothers are patiently finessing their sound, paused by the side of the road and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with their hyperkinetic, gorgeous beats. PAT BLASHILL
(RS 889 - February 14, 2002)
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