There has been talk of "Palookaville" heralding a new artistic direction for Fatboy Slim - an idea immediately confounded by the album’s first single "Slash Dot Dash". The Fischer Price scratches, rhythmic epilepsy, repetitive vocal samples and raucous Dead Kennedy’s sample are classic Fatboy – crudely hedonistic, mind-numbingly predictable and ultimately very saleable.
Yet as the album unfolds, signs of a freshly manipulated vision do become evident. Working on Blur’s "Think Tank" album last year (he produced two tracks) inspired Norman Cook to reduce his reliance on the sampler and work with live musicians for the first time since The Housemartins.
A canny assembly of musicians he’s gathered, too: Bootsy Collins, Damon Albarn, Lateef The Truth Speaker (of Blackalicious and Latyrx fame) and Justin Robertson – all respectable artists in their fields that appeal to both underground and mainstream audiences. After a series of insubstantial starters – the mediocre opener "Don’t Let The Man Get You Down", the toy-town "Slash Dot Dash", the lite-rap of "Wonderful Night" – Fatboy eventually serves-up a fleshier main course.
The pseudo-industrial edge of "Long Way From Home" (featured on the O2 ad) gives way not to yet another inevitable big beat anthem, but a catchy, if commercial, indie-pop song. The soulful "Put It Back Together" capitalises pleasantly on the mood, bringing in a disarming doo-wop backing vocal and a drowsy Damon Albarn, who slurs his way through the rest of the meandering set.
Lest we think for a nano-second that Slim has abandoned his narcotica-fuelled shtick, "Mi Bebe Masoquista" ("My Masochixtic Baby") and the rocky "Push And Shove" (featuring Robertson) bring some chemical vibes to the party, the unashamedly romantic "North West Three" (which samples John and Beverley Martin's "Primrose Hill" classic) providing a soothing come-down directly afterwards.
But after "The Journey" – a better Lateef track set in triplets – it seems Slim just plain ran out of ideas. "Jin Go Lo Ba" bastardises Candido’s "Jingo" into a corpulent house chugger; "Song For The Chesh" revisits anachronistic late 90s blunted beats territory; and is that really an electronic version of Steve Miller’s "The Joker" for a finale? It is, and even with P-Funk don Bootsy on vocal duties, it fails to impact.
While several nice surprises make "Palookaville" a move on from it’s lacklustre predecessor, "Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars", the paucity of innovative ideas, reliance on old recipes and directionless experimenting make for a fairly tasteless repaste.
