REVIEWS:
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(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Breathe. LOW POINTS: Funky Shit, Fuel My Fire, Disel Power, Firestarter, Climbatize, Smack My Bitch Up.
There are some times I really don't understand why the hell people like what they do. According to a Q poll published in 1998, this is a more loved album than Dark Side of the Moon or Abbey Road. I don't really hear anything all that interesting or exciting here. People seem to be hearing genius. I listen to The Fat of the Land and I hear monotonous drivel, that neither goes anywhere, nor has even half the amount of musical ideas you'd hope for from a fifty minute album. Songs go on and on, and I don't think that anyone who's not a huge fan of this sort of techno is going to like this much. Then again, you could say similar things about Odelay, which ranks as another adored album that I can't stomach, and maybe I'm wrong there as well.
Not everything on The Fat Of The Land is bad, though. "Breathe" does succeed in making a groovy sort of danceable atmosphere and beat, the constant rhythm actually working well and not growing tiresome for a whole four minutes. It's also surprising to find that, while "Narayan" does repeat itself way too much in places, it is far from as bad as you'd expect as a nine-minute tune from an album like this. Parts of it are actually really good, the ending, though repetitive, does manage to still hold interest. The intro to "Mindfields" is really interesting, but the song eventually blows itself to hell after that by slipping back into the same thing we've heard over and over here.
But the rest... yuck. "Funky Shit" has nothing going for it at all, the predictable fucked up beats backed by the line "That's some funky shit!" repeated over and over throughout the song. Not what I want to hear. And the rapping on "Disel Power" is atrocious, one of the worst things I've heard, and I'm not even going to mention the awful lyircs. "Firestarter" is (and I never thought I'd say this) too British for its own good, some worthless rants with an accent that really doesn't fit the music at all, and rather it seems to be the emphasis of the vocal delivery. What a joke. The attempt at aggression in "Fuel My Fire" falls flat on it's face, turning out no more than laughable.
God knows why this was (and still is) so big. Most of it just sounds like generic techno, nothing groundbreaking, innovative or even interesting. It all sounds the same to me, repeated over and over until, *yawn*, is it over yet? Finally. A 4 for this sucker is generous, and without "Breathe" I wouldn't have hesistated at all to rate it even lower. It's not even the fact that it's a dancy techno album. I mean, Screamadelica is fantastic. That works for me, and this bores me to death, and I'm still not too sure why. And people seem to love it love it love it. Oh well. Maybe the problem's just with me. Maybe I just can't buy into some sort of genius that's so apparent to everyone else. I'll give this album a low rating, but I'm probably missing out on something really great.
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COMMENTS
"Breathe" does rule. Thats all i have to say.