Jamiroquai

Funk Odyssey

Jamiroquai on auto pilot: sad, but not disastrous

Review Score:

(6/10)
In my opinion Jamiroquai is one of the best bands ever. Their mix of styles, their versatile tracks, their heal-the-world-with-a-punch lyrics, the charismatic foreman Jay Kay and his slick vocals (which never get boring!) are a combination hardly matched anywhere else in the music business. The first two albums were like magic. Emergency on Planet Earth was sensational back in '93, but still contained the raw edges you'd expect from a young band. Its follow up, The Return of the Space Cowboy proved to be EOPE+. Perfectioned lyrics and tracks that would never bore you, plus a bigger range of instruments used. The third album, Travelling without Moving, was still great and incorporated more hit-ripe songs. Still, the Jams lost the timeless sound.
Synkronized for many reasons, importantly the leaving of Stuart Zender, was a far lesser album. Tracks that normally would be bonus tracks on singles were placed on the album. The original songs, such as Canned Heat, still were reasonable hits but not exactly as exciting as the ones on the first three albums.
This brings me to their latest release, the not very inspired-titled Funk Odyssey. Its not bad, one of the best albums in my collection, but it doesn't have the eternity value of the rest. Jay & co are travelling without moving, they're on auto pilot. Sad, but can you blame them? It's good enough to keep their club of trusty fans, and their live acts are good enough to make audiences go wild.
To go short: if you love their other work you'll like this album, but the guyz have lost their edge. That's why I give it only three stars. If it had been their first album it would have been four. Here's hoping though that Jamiroquai will find the golden road again. They're not far from it!

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