Kish Kash

I didn’t immediately fall in love with Basement Jaxx‘ new album Kish Kash the way I did with their previous two albums (Remedy and Rooty). I mean,those were almost perfect pop recaords: taking house and electronic dance in such new directions that they seemed to be entirely original and new, and to fulfill some sort of Platonic ideal of what pop music was supposed to be. But Kish Kash has grown on me with repeated listenings, and now I’m convinced it is as great as anything else Basement Jaxx has done.
I think my delayed response has something to do with the new album’s gigantism: it stretches its songs to almost operatic proportions (not in length but in density — i.e. heavier and more densely orchestrated), so that they aren’t as clean and neatly defined and graceful as the songs on the previous albums were. And I usually find that sort of thing annoying, in pop. But what’s converted me this time is the fact that Basement Jaxx do in fact achieve their ambition: the emotions in these songs are larger than life, which means that they are both intense and also strangely frozen (the same sort of distancing effect one gets in good melodrama). The effect is totally gorgeous, and the album covers a lot of ground in terms of different genres, all of which get reflected, amplified, and put onstage, as it were. Basement Jaxx go beyond the house/dance framework of their previous records to a more extensive sort of funk. Indeed, the music recalls both the ambitions and the stylistics of Prince in the 1980s; and if it doesn’t have the dynamic personality of Prince, it does have the dexterity, virtuosity, and range. And as for the personality: the album, as usual, has great guest performers singing for them, most notably Meshell and Dizzee Rascal and Siouxie Sioux (!) (as well as Lisa Kekaula – I don’t know who she is, but she is fabulous).