We Are The Night

It's been a while since I've been truly impressed by The Chemical Brothers work (not since Surrender, truth be told, aside from the odd track here and there), and I wasn't expecting too much from the new album based on the current single (catchy, and liable to get stuck in your head, but with no real meat to it). Well, I was wrong, the new album We Are The Night is awesome. Not uniformly so, sure, but it has enough outstanding tracks to keep dragging me back for another listen.

It might be the slight Boards of Canada-ish feel to some of the tracks (or rather, sections of tracks - The intro to Saturate could almost have been pulled from Macquarie Ridge, and the reversed loops on Harpoons are about as BoC as you can get), but there's more to it than that. The Klaxons contribution is awesome, The Salmon Dance is as ridiculously sublime as the name suggests, and as for Burst Generator... Let's just say I haven't had a dance track make me want to get up and... Well, dance... Like that in a long time.

After so many disappointing albums this year so far, it's really refreshing to find something that actually makes you sit up and take notice.