Review Summary: For Tomorrow: A Guide to Contemporary British Music, 1988-2013 (Part 57)
Some albums evoke places. Not simply the real places we tie them too, but the construction of the album itself can evoke locations. Airy atmosphere can take on the shape of a forest, add a little momentum and it’s a highway running through country landscapes. But any old schmo can sing about heartache and crank the reverb knob. Carving a distinct environment out of joy is harder. Basement Jaxx’s 2001 pop odyssey
Rooty is a city constructed from bits of Chicago, Ibiza, New Orleans, and Miami. Each scrubbed and polished of flaws and vaulted 100 years into some wonderful future. There, the Jaxx (Simon Ratcliffe and Felix Buxton) have your entire vacation itinerary already mapped out for you. All you’re asked to do is enjoy yourself. And in
Rooty, pleasure occurs easily and often.
Rooty opens by shifting heaven and earth with a song so good I seriously considered an article in which I argued that it was the best song ever made. “Romeo” is a triumph of raw effort. A song that clearly was the result of countless hours of second guessing, overdubs, re-recording, and editing that comes out sounding as natural as the tides. It’s the sound of two people throwing everything at the wall and watching in awe as everything sticks. Where to even begin? The cloud parting intro? Kele Le Roc’s incredible vocal performance, one that runs through a staggeringly wide range of emotions while still sounding charged with the power of freedom? Perhaps it’s the pinball machine of sound effects strewn throughout the song that never feel even the slightest bit superfluous. No, it has to be the bridge.
That bridge. When all of Le Roc’s emotions clog up her throat until they come pouring out in this half sing half scat climaxing in one more blissful chorus. Maybe “Romeo”’s singular power lies in that well-trod refrain, “Let it all go”, and the way the song reanimates it into something powerful again. I may never know but I’m looking forward to spending the rest of my life figuring it out.
Pop/house full-lengths tend to go a little something like this; the tracks with vocalists are the good tracks, the instrumental tracks are the filler. Even Basement Jaxx fell victim to this cliche on their debut
Remedy, with the handful of instrumentals being woefully overshadowed by the massive vocal tracks. Realizing this, the Jaxx created
Rooty with a no-filler mindset, shearing away the instrumental tracks and leaving only the best the duo could offer. A series of tracks that would shame just about any other pop artist’s entire discography. Following a song as brain blowing as “Romeo” would be impossible for most but the Jaxx pull it off with ease, sucking the song’s sunshine into the neon night as “Breakaway”’s deliberately earsore verses build tension for the moonshot chorus’. “Jus 1 Kiss” soars through clear skies off a lively 4-to-the-floor once the song lifts off and never sets back down. It isn’t all ecstasy and bliss, the tragic Latin flavor of “Broken Dreams” and the unnervingly obsessed “I Want U” help map out the album’s emotional landscape while “Where’s Your Head At?”’s crushingly dense construction feels simultaneously thrillingly and terrifyingly out of control. Even as the record winds down it still finds time for the out-loud-and-proud “Do Your Thing” before closing with the sublime “All I Know”. Chirping along on a few 8-bit chirps and wide wobbling bass, “All I Know” nails the chillout tent closer with aplomb, sending the album off into the sunset.
Even better,
Rooty is the rare pop/house record that was created with a cohesive experience in mind. For once the interludes aren’t superfluous, “Kissalude” ushers the listener out of the opening trio and into the albums middle run while “Freakalude” ends the record’s midsection and sets up the closing trio. Throughout
Rooty there’s a distinct sense of restraint present, which might sound weird talking about an album as hyperactive as this but Basement Jaxx have never been about simply cramming as much sh*t possible into every song. It’s about know when to deploy certain light touches. That brief gasp before the main riff in “Jus 1 Kiss” or the muted guitar riff in “All I Know”, little bits like these lend the album a constant sense of discovery, like there's always something new to be heard.
Basement Jaxx’s
Rooty didn’t change the world upon release. Well received by critics and a decent seller in the UK, it was virtually ignored stateside and it hasn’t acquired much of a legacy since it’s release. It rarely crops up on “best of” lists and most tend to consider it simply good if they consider it at all. This is because
Rooty is so overwhelmingly colorful and fun that it can seem embarrassingly uncool to critics still shaking off the memories of disco. That’s what makes
Rooty so timeless though. At it’s core, it’s an album devoted to smashing every barrier between you and reckless joy.
Rooty’s lack of a higher goal than simply being ridiculously enjoyable can seem frivolous from the outside but once you’re in it’s hard to remember how you ever did without it. It’s easy to hold on to your drink and scoff as you eye the dancefloor in disdain, but
Rooty thinks you’d have more fun if you joined it. If you simply, “let it all go”.
