(Skint)
Herald rating: * * * *
Review: Russell Baillie
The new album from Fatboy Slim - aka Norman Cook - arrives with the expectations that come after his previous, the presciently titled You've Come A Long Way Baby, sold a million or two, and with the man himself in the position of
being a sort of Robbie Williams of dance.
Like Williams, the English producer-DJ has had an amusing musical past (as a Housemartin) and an occasionally famous-for-being-famous present (by being married to Brit telly personality Zoe Ball).
And like Williams, he's a happily pilfering populist. Just like Williams in Britpop, Cook's a canny straddler of dance genres, a big-picture, big-beat guy who knows a great hook (hence Praise You from the previous album getting jingled to death.
But if that fizz-factor and Moby-like ubiquity took the shine off You've Come a Long Baby, the good news here is that Gutter, while not as instantaneous, is a better album for it - even when it's risking another Doors revival on Sunset (Bird of Prey), a trancey workout in which Cook has vultured a Jim Morrison ode to carnivorous ornithology.
Some of the voices present have living and breathing owners, most notably Macy Gray, who first turns up on the squelchy, sultry Love Life, which does rude things to the alphabet, then goes into Aretha mode on Demons, a downbeat mix of rolling gospel piano (care of Bill Withers), Hare Krishna percussion and electronic detailing.
Elsewhere, there's an attractive looping, especially when Bootsy Collins beams down on Weapon of Choice or the lecherous opener Talking About My Baby (which samples 70s blues-rockers Wet Willie).
Its 11 tracks - leading to the finale Song for Shelter, an overextended house meld of the album's first two tracks - all seem designed to peak on the ninth, Drop The Hate which takes a sermon from the good Rev W. Leo Daniels and turns it into something quite levitational.
No, that's not a new idea and neither is much else here.
But in Cook's knob-twiddling hands, Gutter comes with all the vitality of its predecessor and half of its gimmick factor.
Which makes it as good a start to summer as any
