Tom and Ed return with their fourth album, 'Come With Us', a joyous romp that strikes back to the heart of the Chemical sound clash.
Arriving on the arpeggio string arrangement of the title track, you could be forgiven for thinking for an instant that the Chemicals have followed Daft Punk into Baroque pop territory.
The thought is foolish and short lived.
After their brief classical intermission, the Brothers dust down their trademark surging beast of beats and spiralling synth sounds, disinter a dark vocal sample, intoning "Behold We're Coming Back", and deliver a scorching guitar and bass synth laced 'Social' break beat.
As an indication of what is to come it's powerful and poignant, boldly re-stating the no-holds barred approach that originally made the Chemical Brothers stand out.
Lest it be forgotten, not only did the Chemicals break the mould in the mid Nineties by being a dance outfit that embraced indie acts, they also espoused an anything goes philosophy that utilised rock guitar, thundering hip hop drums, scorching acidic 303, African beats and, as they do here, classical string arrangements.
Rising through repeated aural assaults, break beat break downs and a quirky Leo Nocentelli funky guitar line, 'Come With Us' charges like a genetically modified funk rock rhino into the tribal trance of last year's single, 'It Began In Africa'.
'Africa' is competent but next to the engaging, work-in-progress quirky funk of 'Galaxy Bounce', it seems straight. All of which makes the appeal of the soon to be released 'Star Guitar' single more odd.
Combining a slightly tweaked house drum pattern with gushing swells of trance synth lines and an ambient, occasionally Balearic, feel, the formulae here is far from original. But it's won applause wherever it's been played. Once again the secret of its success is in the production, where the endemic fragility of the song is given depth by the contrastingly harsh drum sounds.
But perhaps the greatest achievement of 'Come With Us' is its stamina, with one of the most interesting contributions, the multi textural 'Hoops', only coming half way through the playing order. It may not be the obvious single, but it's probably the album's finest moment.
'My Elastic Eye' again collides the delicate and ephemeral with harsh electronica, and with more devastating effect than the comparatively safe 'Star Guitar'.
The theme of organic fragility jutted against electronic energy is repeated in Beth Ortan's plaintive vocals on 'The State We're In', in which she struggles against keyboards and effects that in anybody else's studio would have been too high in the mix. Here it seems to work.
Juxtaposed to this comes 'Denmark', a bass driven disco stomp that clatters along on early Nineties Knuckle's wood blocks before the full drum kit takes over the percussion and a bass drill pounds into the 'Pig Bag' bass line.
Further pushing the boundaries, 'Pioneer Skies', an awesomely large production for its length, sounds like pure Pete Townshend circa his 'Who's Next' prog era.
Finally the plodding drum rolls of 'The Test', featuring Richard Ashcroft, offer the album's largest olive branch to the unrepentant unconverted.
Unlike their recent offerings, 'Come With Us' doesn't rely on collaborations to cross over into different markets. Nor does it turn out tub-thumping dance music to capture the club contingent.
Rather, like their earlier offerings, it matches big sound crowd-pleasing gimmicks with the cerebrally challenging and adventurous. It exposes the unmatched raw nerve of Chemical Brothers' production and spikes it with innovation.
A subtly brutal and powerfully fragile masterpiece.
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by Ben Osborne