Groove Armada: Lovebox : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

British duo Groove Armada specialize in sample-heavy, beat-wise singles, most notably with 1999's chill-out classic "At the River." But with their fourth full-length disc, Lovebox, they've made an entire album with more peaks than the Pyrenees. "Purple Haze" (no relation to Hendrix) is a Prince-ly piece of dirty-minded funk. The popping, up-tempo "The Final Shakedown" could be the anthem for a Million Ravers March. "Think Twice" is a ruling piano ballad that finds original buffalo gal Neneh Cherry crooning about "champagne down the drain." "Easy" is disco perfection in a Giorgio Moroder mode as Sunshine Anderson belts out the mighty "Looking back, it was easy" chorus. The album's wanton schizophonia results in such a switched-on pileup of styles that Groove Armada have earned their own rubric -- call it electrocrash, and consider it great.

PETER RELIC
(RS 915 – February 6, 2003)