Album: Faithless

Outrospective (Cheeky)

This week's album reviews

Kelly Joe Phelps

Matt Keating

Bran van 3000

Sparklehorse

Over the course of their previous albums Reverence and Sunday 8pm, Faithless assiduously toured the globe in pursuit of the kind of "stadium-house" status accorded the likes of Underworld and the Chemical Brothers. The gruelling schedule just exacerbated the tensions between a small group of people, resulting in the departure of the songwriter Jamie Catto and the guitarist Dave Randall. Though Outrospective bears only the most superficial scars of these fractures in its familiar blend of swirling percussive techno, spacious ambient-house washes and cool, understated raps, there are significantly fewer stand-out tracks than before, and no suggestion that the remaining faithful have a definite sense of the band's future direction. Instead, they dart about restlessly, trying to cover as many bases as possible, from the reggae-beat of "Not Enuff Love", and the Philly-Soul string glissandi draped around the rapper Maxi Jazz's tribute to "Muhammad Ali", to the Latin-tinged house groove of "Tarantula". The best track is probably "Giving Myself Away", on which Maxi brings his customary Zen placidity to an account of a disintegrating relationship (perhaps that of the band itself?). Elsewhere, there's an awful lot of repetitive pounding, while the contributions of Catto's replacement Zoe Johnston are rather cast in the shade by Dido's appearance on "One Step Too Far". It's not a bad album as such, but it packs little of its predecessors' emotional punch.