Basement Jaxx have been conquering London this week with gigs in all four corners of the capital. Naturally, in their home borough of Brixton, their digital casbah funk fandango receives a rapturous response. But you can't help feeling that, as an objective observer, it's not entirely justified.
The Jaxx have always struggled to marry their (admittedly mighty) way with avant-garde studio trickery and an innate, and pretty shameless, populist sensibility. When it works - on 'Red Alert', 'Romeo', 'Where's Your Head At?' - they're untouchable. When it doesn't - as on most of the messy new 'Kish Kash' LP - the results come across as frustratingly cheesy.
They hit the lowest-common-denominator button frequently tonight, mixing Lumidee's 'Never Leave You' into the fade-out of 'Red Alert', DJing terrible breakbeats under the bassline of the White Stripes' 'Seven Nation Army', and playing the Clash bootleg version of 'Romeo' rather than the original. It all seems very two years ago, contributing to the feeling that Simon and Felix have lost their killer touch.
New single 'Lucky Star' brings some much-needed edge back, even though Dizzee Rascal doesn't turn up to rant over the top (he's too busy scaring the kids at Justin Timberlake's gigs, no doubt). And 'Good Luck' - despite seeming grimly unsubtle on record - is the closest they get tonight to fully articulating their so-called 'soul punk' attitude: it's heavy and brash without ever imploding into the drum'n'bass disaster it becomes on 'Kish Kash'.
Felix gets his moment in the spotlight with 'Where's Your Head At?' as usual - and it remains a truly heart-pumping gem of punk-house. But nonetheless, it reminds us how much the dance landscape has altered since it was debuted three years ago. In the face of the new wave of punk-funk, sci-fi r'n'b and electro-pop, the duo's glittery disco stomp is sounding ever more anachronistic. They don't seem to have engaged with their contemporaries this year - Felix admitted in a music mag last month that he was slow to catch on to The Rapture, the band who've completely stolen their crown - and it shows.
By the end, Brixton's been won over, but it's a pyrrhic victory. Basement Jaxx are going to have to try a lot harder next year if they want to recapture the spirit of the peerless party band they once were.
