Post by spidershinobi on Jul 14, 2017 1:14:03 GMT
So, last month I went to the book store just to look at random stuff when I heard Jamiroquai being played on the floor above the one I was in. To my surprise they were holding a free cover band show there to celebrate the release of the latest album: Automaton.
The name "Automaton" is auspicious right now, maybe because of Nier: Automata, but why mention videogames while talking about music, uh? Well, it's relevant.
I admit I was already familiar with a couple of songs because of the official youtube account and I expected an oddball album for the band, but luckily it's only part of the theming rather a genre shift. The thing is that while listening to the likes of Automaton and Superfresh I (and I bet a lot of people) are drawn to remember how there's a notable overlap in Jamiroquai and Daft Punk fanbases, and sometimes there's overlap in songs too as is the case of those two. That said, I wouldn't be super onboard with Jamiroquai "turning" into a better Daft Punk now that the latter has been underwhelming, so I'm happy this album still sounds like Jamiroquai.
The songs themselves are more often than not in line with their previous works, so old fans of the band should feel at home even with the weirder tone of Automaton (talking about the track #02 here). The one thing that bothers me about the album is the order of the tracks, though, I feel that ordering should prioritize some form of message rather than throwing songs in a semi-random manner; in this case the album starts with its most intense song, Shake It On, wasting most of its energy on the 5 first tracks and not really ending with the slowest one.
In a more personal level, I feel that my favorite song here is "Shake It On", and my absolutely least favorite by a wide margin is "We Can Do It", which feels like a leftover idea from Superfresh.
And lastly, I said that something would be relevant later, right? Well, this album feels like something coming out of 16-bit videogames of decades ago, and I may or may not go into further details in that other more specific topic, but multiple tracks here give me that feel, while Dr. Buzz straight up makes me think only of Shin Megami Tensei, nothing else.
