The Chemical Brothers: Singles '93-'03 : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

There's rarely a dull moment with the Chemical Brothers, and that commitment to manic dancefloor bombast has been both their saving grace and their undoing in the past decade. "Block Rockin' Beats," their greatest and least subtle song, sounds like the Meters crashing an eighteen-wheeler at volume 11; the Schoolly D vocal hook actually serves as a breath-grabbing pause. That kind of counterintuitive thinking is at the root of the Brothers' kitchen-sink approach to electronic music, which matches king-size percussion with meaty guitar licks, vibrating synths and, at times, the odd fey vocal. Unfortunately, there's no new story here: For all his eccentricities, the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne can't make the new track "The Golden Path" the twisted synth-pop revival it wants to be.