Grandpa Rave speaks: "Ah yes, I remember the Chemicals. I used to like 'em when they were still called the Dust Brothers, before everybody and their mother went apeshit over them. Man, did that first album go stale quickly. After that? Working with bloody Noel on some crap Beatles rip-off, 'Setting Sun', maybe the most overrated song of the nineties if you ask me. Forget all that, it's their third album 'Surrender' that did it for me. Okay it had another crap Noel track on it but they where changing into something far more interesting. Started doing some retro rave tracks like 'Under the Influence' and 'Hey Boy Hey Girl' that had more to do with connecting to prime Underground Resistance then those Block Fartin Beats. I mean they were never going to be as transcendental as Daft Punk or as personal as Underworld but they had this niche cornered, music for wide-eyed post-rave hippie girls and boys.

So basically, 'Come With Us' used the same model as 'Surrender' and they did finally trade Noel for that Verve bloke, not that it made a lot of difference. But darn if the first half of the album didn't kick my old bones back into life. The Chemicals always started their albums the same way: big tune up front to immediately grab the listener by the balls. The title track segued into the first single that some folks at the time thought was a bit of a letdown. Hell no, 'It Began In Afrika' is a sleek bastard of a dance track, not that it actually broke any new ground, almost nothing on 'Come With Us' actually did, it just did what a good dance track had to do at that time: make you dance! Where was I? Oh yeah, the other single 'Star Guitar' enjoyed some pre-release hype, I though it was a decent try to see if those wishy-washy Stardust sounds could work with the Chemicals sound, somewhere though the different sounds didn't really make an interesting coherent tune. No, my highlight of the album was this fairly anonymous tune named 'Hoops' which looped a weird 60s sample that gave you neat flashbacks to the days when raving had this careless kindergarten feel to it, cozy and happy. Really idiosyncratic tune, what with the way they somehow fitted this acoustic guitar in the mix. Idiosyncratic? Write it down kids, it means: characteristic peculiarity. Some Greek fellows put it together a long time ago.

All this reminiscing and talking in Greek makes me tired, let's just say that the album lost its focus after that, they got Beth Orton to sing another country rave-ballad and then tried to speed things up again without having quality tunes. Basically the same thing that happened to 'Surrender' at midpoint and that always remained the Chemical's main problem: they never were good finishers. I'll keep the rest of the story of the Chemical Brothers for another rainy day dear children; you'll never believe that after a long hiatus they returned in 2006 with a 3 CD rave opera called 'Big Ravus Magnificus'. Another story indeed!