Review: Basement Jaxx – Scars (2009)
For their fifth full-length release, Basement Jaxx once again name-drops themselves on their lead-off track, and for the first two cuts, the prognosis for Scars looks exceptionally strong, with the ominous howling of the accompaniment in “Scars” against vocalists Kelis and Meleka’s exotic glissandos: “all I’ve got / is my scars.”
Then, just as the album is really heating up, Eli “Paperboy” Reed steps up to the plate and obliterates any accumulated sense of groove with his whitebread James Brown crooning. His “self-penned” (read: shameless, red-handed, thieving throwback) music is enough of a blight on its own, but Basement Jaxx-ers Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton clearly felt the need to remove its only redeeming qualities — that is, everyone else in the band — and place his grating wail against a cheeky blend of Brit-pop. It is mind-numbingly disastrous; just hearing his breathy tenor straining to hit the run during “mayday /what am I gonna do?” sours the next ten minutes of listening.
Though nobody can fault Basement Jaxx for trying to move in a new direction, Scars feels very much like a thin spread of already-tested material, not a fresh avenue. Drawing up the album as an R&B grab-bag, in terms of the vocalists, is similar Queen’s decision to make Hot Space based on the success of “Another One Bites The Dust;” it might not have been a bad idea, per se, but it lacks the requisite consistency of songwriting, and the theme’s value is exhausted long before the record has finished playing. At the end of the day, what Basement Jaxx have got is a few great variations on a theme (“Right Here’s The Spot,” from Kish Kash, “Do Your Thing” from Rooty, etc.), and an entire album extrapolated from the trudged remains.
It’s always the eternal balance of that one magical single versus the rest of the album. But if they’d come forward with eight or ten tracks like “Scars” or “Raindrops,” this would be the best dance album of the year, far and away.
Basement Jaxx’s “Scars,” (feat. Kelis, Meleka, and Chipmunk) from Scars
