Morcheeba's rise to fame has been akin to doing 0-60 in a Morris Minor – slow, steady and thoroughly unremarkable. Their brand of broken beats and melancholic blues served to fill the gap left after Portishead and the best of the Bristol massive retreated to the studio. Never quite as engaging or inventive as their West Country peers, their debut set 'Who Can You Trust?' was none the less a valiant attempt at recreating the trip hop formula. The follow up 'Big Calm' ditched the atmosphere in favour of a warmer, lighter sound diluted by a large dash of pop, which saw them gradually reach a far wider audience.
Their third opus 'Fragments of Freedom', recorded over the space of a year in their own Clapham studio, is obviously an attempt to continue the trend. A mixed bag of styles from soul to hip hop, to jazz and back again the album is held together by an even stronger pop sensibility.
'World Looking In', essentially Morcheeba by numbers, drifts lazily into life with their trademark pedal steel guitars and lead singer Skye's honey soaked vocals. The ghost of acid jazz haunts 'Love Is Rare' and instrumental 'Coming Down Gently' which both plod along without any real direction. Their forthcoming single 'Rome Wasn't Built In A Day', with its Motown-esque pop positivity and emphatic horn section is undoubtedly their most blatantly commercial outing to date and suffers as a result, falling flat where it should be uplifting.
Elsewhere on the album the hip hop influenced tracks tend to mark the most sense, particularly the woefully short Biz Markie collaboration 'In The Hands Of The Gods'. 'Shallow End' showcases a confident and assured disco direction complete with chic style guitars and lush strings. However, the title track provides a suitably downbeat finale with its squealing guitars, blunted beats and a closing manta of "when this party's over you got nowhere to go".
In the main, a little too bland to ever get truly tasty, 'Fragments Of Freedom' only features a few memorable moments. Rarely lifting itself above mere mediocrity the album is no doubt destined to provide background music at thirty-something dinner parties and sedate wine bars.
