It's been five years since 'Psyence Fiction', the debut by trip hop instigator James Lavelle's UNKLE project, divided listeners and critics. A bloated, guest-filled, years-in-the-making behemoth, that album groaned under the weight of its own sense of importance.
With DJ Shadow on board, Lavelle was clearly looking to make something that would make a claim for legitimacy for sample-based music. But, expiring under this phenomenal pressure, the record failed to live up to most aspects of the hype.
'Never, Never, Land' may have been as long in the womb as its predecessor, but, despite a worthiness that means it aspires to being considerably more than just another pop album, this is much less heavy going, and a great deal more successful. There are even jokes, of a kind: the opening rumble of 'Back & Forth' includes a sample from Ozzy Osbourne intoning that "I've changed", which is the sort of pop culture cross-referencing that passes for a belly laugh in the UNKLE world. Hah hah hah hah. Hah. Etc.
While most of the vocals are left to Richard File, a previously unheralded mate of Lavelle's who has replaced Shadow as the other constituent part of the UNKLE unit, there are still plenty of guests here. The difference is that this time round their contributions never threaten to unbalance the whole. 'Safe In Mind' features a vocal from Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age that oscillates between whispers and screams as the track hums and throbs around him.
There are ballads in which File sounds like the ghost of previous collaborator Thom Yorke, and an apparent homage to imperious music pioneers Joy Division called 'Panic Attack'. But overall this feels like an album by a band who occasionally draft in outside help, rather than a compilation of tracks made by the same musical hands but designed to suit a succession of leading voices.
And so, compared to 'Psyence Fiction''s ruthlessly cut glass exterior, this is a rounded, more human record, considerably less calculated and therefore far more approachable. Tellingly, when it makes its grand statements, it seeks to engage with the outside world rather than retreat into a cocoon of introspection. Where 'Psyence Fiction''s raison d'etre was to get people to take it seriously, 'Never, Never, Land' wants us to rethink our attitudes to the outside world.
The brilliant single 'Eye For An Eye' sets out an anti-war, post-9/11 stall, and while little that follows can reach a similarly soaring peak, it at least shows that Lavelle has finally figured out that music works best when it isn't aiming for respect, but when it deserves it.
