‘Emergency On Planet Earth’ by Jamiroqaui

The thing I find most interesting about ‘Emergency On Planet Earth’ is how successful it was. Think of Jamiroquai, and it’s almost certain that you’ll think predominantly of the ‘Travelling Without Moving Album’. However, that never made number one, and this did. The other interesting thing is how different this album is from his later ones. Jamiroquai have developed something of a reputation for churning out the same stuff again and again, but this really isn’t fair. This record is much looser and more organic than what would follow, and this is both a strength and a weakness.

The biggest problem with this album is its lack of discernable melodies. Once you’ve passed the first few tracks – ‘When You Gonna Learn’, ‘Too Young To Die’, and so forth – the album runs through a series of meandering tracks which just play along with little apparent structure. On the positive side, this doesn’t really seem to matter, as the music remains a joy to listen to. Picking out the obvious hooks is hard, but the weaving together of instruments from track to track is a delight. There are seventeen credited musicians on the album, as well as an undefined string section, so this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The strings in particular are far more prominent here than they would go on to be, and there’s a world-music feel which later albums would loose (though when I say ‘world-music’, I’m really only talking about didjeridoo and percussion).

After a couple of days letting this album play and play (I hadn’t listened to it for a good while), I couldn’t tell you much about the songs on the second half, but I did enjoy it. Worth coming back to.