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Dye
Correspondent & Expert
Joined: 16 Nov 2003
Posts: 5146
Location: Planet Home; Buenos Aires, Argentina
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 Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 00:33 |
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Deesh, I can't remember all your posts, so sorry if this ones have already been posted.
Is pretty good:
Jamiroquai
High Times: Singles 1992-2006
(Epic)
US release date: 21 November 2006
UK release date: 6 November 2006
by Christian John Wikane
January 18th 2007
“Hoping we can live in peace until the year 3000. No More War on Planet Home.”
—Jamiroquai, Synkronized liner notes, 1999.
Jamiroquai is as much a “what” as a “who”. The latter is a group led by the most quintessential of front mans, Jay Kay. (The band’s name is a marriage of “jam” and “Iroquois”.) The former is what concerns this collection of Jamiroquai’s greatest hits—a unique style of music unto itself that recalls the cream of R&B-derived disco, more than anything, but also incorporates musical sensibilities of a not-too-distant future. Any listener who recognizes that iconic figure with the horns and out-turned feet can attest to Jamiroquai’s intoxicating fusion of grooves for the body and mind. After all, few bands churn out contagious funk while singing about ecological disaster. That alone makes Jamiroquai great and High Times: Singles 1992-2006 a must to the discriminating music listener’s collection.
Rewind to 1992. “When You Gonna Learn” could have been that one song by that great band nobody ever heard from again, but Jamiroquai had so much creative synergy between its band members that they needed a whole album to fully explore its potency. Sony signed Jamiroquai on the strength of “When You Gonna Learn” and followed with the release of Emergency on Planet Earth (1993). On that first single, Jay Kay warned “Armageddon’s near”, but listen to those lilting horns, the drone of the didgeridoo, the soulful performance by Jay Kay. Hey, if Armageddon’s near, we might as well dance, and that’s been the thrust of some of Jamiroquai’s best work, all captured on this stellar compilation. “Emergency on Planet Earth”, “(Don’t) Give Hate a Chance”, “Deeper Underground”, and “Virtual Insanity” are bracing invitations to the dance floor, even when espousing all that’s wrong with humanity.
“Virtual Insanity”, from the uniformly excellent Traveling Without Moving (1996), was Jamiroquai’s break out single in the U.S., bolstered in part by a high-profile video on MTV. Unfortunately, Jamiroquai was commercially successful in the U.S. only as long as they represented some sort of soulful throwback, part of the U.S. music scene’s fascination with fads predicated upon nostalgia. (Nobody represents this phenomenon better than Brian Setzer.) No matter. Jay Kay and company stayed true to the groove and those who dipped into the water with them got drenched in discofied funk.
Matters of the heart also concerned Jamiroquai, whether lustful ("Cosmic Girl"), emotional ("Little L") or whimsical ("Seven Days in Sunny June"). In fact, “Seven Days in Sunny June” (Dynamite, 2005), which glided into the UK Top 20 in 2005, stands as the best of the best collected here. The melody mirrors the emotional shift in the lyrics, word for word. “Oooh/ So baby let’s get it on/ Drinking wine and killing time/ Sitting in the summer sun/ You know/ I wanted you so long/ Why’d you have to drop that bomb on me.” The key change in the melody on that last line, though subtle, brilliantly reflects the false hopes contained in the preceding lyrics. Because Jamiroquai’s hits may be overly familiar to fans by this point, it’s easy to take for granted how expertly crafted the songs are at close listen.
The obligatory new tracks tagged on to the end High Times are the anti-dote to the bleak picture painted by another of Jamiroquai’s very best, “(Don’t) Give Hate a Chance”. “Runaway”, with its slight influence of Nile Rodgers’ guitar-scratches, boasts an infectious chorus while “Radio” is a rock-driven chunk of space-age funk with Jay Kay pursuing yet another “cosmic girl” of his dreams. Both tracks are welcome additions to the Jamiroquai discography.
Listening to High Times: Singles 1992-2006 unveils an impressive musical consistency that’s strengthened over 14 years. Most importantly, the music is as good now as it was then and High Times encapsulates the highlights of a band who’s far from finished. If you missed the party the first time around, High Times shows what you’ve been missing.
9/10
Jamiroquai
High Times: Singles 1992-2006
(Epic)
US release date: 21 November 2006
UK release date: 6 November 2006
by Mike Joseph
Forgive yourself for not knowing exactly who or what Jamiroquai is—at least if you‘re an American. Like artists ranging from Cliff Richard to Robbie Williams, Jamiroquai (the guy and the band) are a British phenomenon, with hit singles and albums stretching back almost a decade and a half. Despite a pair of American Grammy awards, these guys have really only registered the national radar screen exactly two times. There was the crazy video for “Virtual Insanity”, in which lead singer Jay Kay sang in a room that had trouble staying in one place. The second was the belated placement of a minor hit in the cult classic comedy Napoleon Dynamite. Otherwise, you probably just know Jamiroquai as the dude with the funny hats. You probably can’t say it correctly, either.
Well, never fear, music listener! Even though an album like High Times: Singles 1992-2006 makes perfect sense overseas (actually, it probably should have arrived a hell of a lot sooner), it’s a bit of a head scratcher on these shores—a greatest hits album by a band that really only had one or two hits. Nevertheless, considering the wildly inconsistent content of their six studio albums, this is a welcome sampler for anyone who wants the hit(s) without having to sit through the chaff.
One thing’s for sure, though, these guys listened to a LOT of late ‘70s/early ‘80s disco and post-disco dance music. I daresay Jay and Co. have probably burned through five or six copies of Off the Wall. While early Jamiroquai press made the absolutely laughable comparison to Stevie Wonder (almost as insulting as trying to pass this funk band off as “alternative”), you can tell that these folks listened to a lot of Heatwave and Earth, Wind & Fire back in the day. The band deserves props for keeping a live-band funk sound in circulation, something very few American soul bands even do anymore. Originally branded part of the same “acid jazz” scene that spawned The Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai has outlasted all of their contemporaries, with only subtle variances in their general sound.
That sound is never less than danceable, and they’ve been able to pull quite a few great singles out of their (big, furry) hats. The band’s debut, “When You Gonna Learn”, is still one of their freshest tunes. Hell, how many danceable tunes do you know that feature a freakin’ didgeridoo? Considering how much I loathe modern dance music, it was great just to hear something with a melody and live drums and bass. Kay’s whiny, feminine voice and hippy-dippy lyrics (at least initially) managed to skirt the fine line between “precious” and annoying.
That disco groove is the linchpin of this album, and although the beats rarely slow down (the strangely mellow “Space Cowboy” being one of a few exceptions), the band actually fared best when they added a bit of a different element to their sound. The smooth flow of “Virtual Insanity” recalls a jazzier sort of funk, while songs like “Deeper Underground” and the recent “Feels Just Like It Should”—which you are now hearing 15 times a day as a cell-phone commercial—add a bit of a rock edge to the proceedings. “Underground”, featured on the surprisingly solid soundtrack to 1998’s forgettable Godzilla remake, has a sinister, claustrophobic sound that resulted in the band’s second best musical moment.
While all of the songs on this compilation (including two decent new tracks, “Runaway“ and “Radio“) are danceable, nothing makes you wanna shake your groove thing as much as “Canned Heat”. Even though I was a toddler during the disco era, I’ve soaked up enough of the music to know that had this song been released 20 years earlier, it would have been a huge hit . The thumping groove, soaring strings and indelible hook are perfect for absolutely losing yourself on the dance floor—even if memories of the dance scene in Napoleon Dynamite featuring this song is still rattling around in your head.
Since Jamiroquai’s albums tend to meander a bit, High Times is a godsend. Whether you’re entertaining guests at a house party or bustin’ a groove while watching the dishes, the band’s danceable sound is best served on this compilation. And, if it leads you to discover any of the soul/funk bands that Jay Kay and co. were influenced by, well… that’s even more of a good thing.
7/10
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deesh
Joined: 23 Feb 2002
Posts: 2717
Location: +001
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| Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2007 03:33 |
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http://www.sfbaytimes.com/index.php?sec=article&article_id=5975
January 11, 2007
Jamiroquai
High Times: Singles 1992-2006
www.Jamiroquai.com
Jay Kay aka Jamiroquai shares his name with the band he has fronted for fifteen years so far with much success. With numerous awards and five world tours playing to five million people in thirty eight countries Jamiroquai have been supreme ambassadors for cosmopolitan grooves and eco-politics “elevating Acid Jazz from a record label to a music genre” while making greens and vegetarians hip. On High Times: Singles 1992-2006 Jamiroquai serves up two new tracks alongside seventeen singles that have helped define a new music frontier. My picks: “Virtual Insanity,” “Alright,” “Corner Of The Earth,” “Feels Just Like It Should,” “Seven Days In Sunny June” and “Runaway.”
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Dye
Correspondent & Expert
Joined: 16 Nov 2003
Posts: 5146
Location: Planet Home; Buenos Aires, Argentina
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| Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 20:20 |
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Here's an interesting one I found (apprently new):
High Times
Artist: Jamiroquai
Known as much for his unique brand of charged acid jazz and dancey pop-funk, as he is for his often outlandish headwear, Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay has forged a well-rewarded career that has lasted an impressive decade or so.
Beginning as a promising upstart in the then-trendy acid jazz genre, Jamiroquai has matured (or some might say, degenerated) into a hit-making machine and one of the confirmed mainstays in contemporary British dance music, with virtually every single released making it to the Top 40, and sales in excess of 20 million albums worldwide.
High Times is the obligatory career compilation that acts as a bit of a stopgap release to buy time in between studio albums, and also functions as a chance to take stock of the achievements of Jamiroquai’s career.
As expected, all the big ones are present and accounted for, along with the mandatory two new tracks tacked on to entice completists.
An added incentive is that the collection is arranged in a handy chronological order so as to give a sense of artistic continuity, systematically tracking the heady acid jazz origins, and then the sleek disco-soul-influenced mid-period, and on to the latter-day fixation with psychedelic pop-funk.
The progression from skittering inventiveness to blatant commerciality has never been better chronicled than it is here.
The inspired acid jazz days are represented by selections from Jamiroquai’s first two albums, 1993’s Emergency on Planet Earth and 1994’s The Return of the Space Cowboy. The pro-environment anthems When You Gonna Learn and Too Young to Die are the standouts from this era, with their syncopated lite jazz grooves and surprising didgeridoo garnishes, but the goofily blissful Space Cowboy also works rather well, by virtue of its spaced-out tribute to marijuana culture.
The commercial breakthrough (and artistic concessions) really started with 1996’s Travelling Without Moving, which marked Jamiroquai’s burgeoning fascination with neo-disco textures, with a healthy dose of late-70s R&B thrown in for good measure.
It spawned the monster hits Virtual Insanity (mostly remembered for its innovative, special effects-laden video clip, still popular on MTV), the kinetic Cosmic Girl and the dance floor staple Alright, and even managed to gain a foothold in the difficult American market, no mean feat in itself.
This period also gave us the squelchy, house-informed Deeper Underground, originally found on the soundtrack to 1998’s Godzilla.
Synkronized from 1999 and 2001’s A Funk Odyssey commenced Jamiroquai’s experiments with pop-funk structures, with favourites like Canned Heat, Little L and Love Foolosophy all emerging from this phase, all sweeping synth strings, busy, rubbery rhythm sections and Jay Kay’s own characteristically yelping, occasionally histrionic vocal cords.
Dynamite from 2005 saw Jamiroquai continuing on the same funky path, but with some acoustic instrumentation thrown in for variety’s sake, as in the mellow Seven Days in Sunny June and Don’t Give Hate a Chance.
New numbers Radio and Runaway both suffer from weak songwriting and a listless feel, giving the impression that they were nothing more than rush jobs.
So, while High Times is a worthwhile purchase and a terrific sampler of Jamiroquai’s four-on-the-floor artistry, there’s actually nothing here to really challenge the boundaries of pop.
While the acid jazz of their nascent era might have held some promise of restless creativity, Jamiroquai later compromised somewhat, opting instead for the commercial route to make accessible, hit-bound records that relied on tried and tested formulas.
Fair enough, since you can only rely on gimmicky didgeridoo samples and preposterous buffalo headgear for so long without eventually running out of ideas.
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As much as I hate to admit it, "The progression from skittering inventiveness to blatant commerciality has never been better chronicled than it is here", has some truth in it.
BUT the hidden part is that Jamiroquai is much more than those 20 songs in the High Times compilation album.
Which is the key point when it comes to review music.
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