Some people are never satisfied. The way the Stereo MC's return to live and recording duties has been received in certain quarters makes it seem like anything less than a reinvention of the rock'n'roll wheel would have been some sort of ignominious failure.
Yet the truth - more prosaic, perhaps, but, well, more true - is that the Stereo MC's have put an end to what was probably pop's longest pregnant pause ever by making another Stereo MC's album. Not a Miles Davis album or a Radiohead album; not an ambient dancefloor drum'n'bass Hoxton coffee table meisterwerk, nor some previously inconceivable fusion of progressive rock, virtuoso jazz and digitised tribal rhythms. No, 'Deep Down & Dirty' is - heavens forfend! - a record that sounds like, well, the Stereo MC's.
The duo at the heart of the band, Nick Hallam and Rob Birch, have evidently been listening patiently and nodding appreciatively from time to time while the moods and the music they described at the dawn of the 90s have been taken off into different territories by their manifold followers. Thus 'We Belong In This World Together' is reminiscent of Fatboy Slim's 'Praise You', a gospel-tinged vocal supported by a nu-jack techno-funk sonic scaffold, 'Shameless' recalls the Happy Mondays and 'Running' comes off like the illegitimate offspring of a union between the Chemical Brothers and the KLF's 'What Time Is Love?'. But for the most part, 'Deep Down & Dirty' just reminds you how influential and important the Stereos were, and continue to be.
The finest material here - 'Stop At Nothing''s spring-loaded bayou funk, the orchestral dubscape 'Unconscious', 'Graffiti Part One''s infectious 60s dirt-in-the-grooves authenticity and the mesmerising title track - all sound genuinely like material no other band could have made. There's a thorough and uncomplicated, intuitive understanding of the dynamics and textures they're dealing with that only people with considerable experience to add to an evident flair could hope to achieve. What's key to so much music, and what is so often lacking, is in knowing where not to add things. There's so much space between the instruments, vocals and sounds on this album that sometimes you wonder whether it's all going to fall apart. And if it took the band nine years to rediscover that sort of confidence, then there's plenty of their competitors who could do worse than follow their lead.
In probably the best thing here, 'Traffic', Rob's cocksure declamation that "Where you are is where I've been" is just the icing on the cake. His lyric-writing rarely encompasses such egotistical concerns, but it's certainly not an indulgence, and, above all, it's fair comment. The Stereo MC's have consistently predated advances in dance music, and there's little
reason to doubt that 'Deep Down & Dirty' will yet provide future sonic navigators with another invaluable route map. And if that's not enough, there's little hope for you.
by Angus Batey