![]() Songs like Cloud 9 and Summer Girl might have come out as Pharrell cuts few would have adjusted their brims. ![]() Widen it even more and Automaton is revealed as a canny act of triangulation between a number of funks that are selling well – between Daft Punk and the vintage come-hithers of Pharrell Williams, no stranger to outsized hats. Widen the frame of reference and you could argue that Daft Punk are robo-funk arrivistes, having plundered many sources en route from Kraftwerk to Studio 54. It takes 11 tracks and the racing jazz-funk of Vitamin to get what you might call peak ’Quai, rather than modish electro-funk. Everything else here is perfectly clubbable pop music. Automaton is actually more than slavish: it boasts a couple of clever stumbles that please the ear as they trip the feet. The Dafter these Jamiroquai tracks, the better they sound. Pop is a giant feedback loop in which Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield begat Jamiroquai and Pharrell Automaton seems an audacious comeback, to say the least, but also strangely listenable. Fast-forward to 2017, and Daft Punk’s continued ubiquity (in cahoots with the Weeknd) means the French duo’s chrome-plated thumbprints remain all over this sound. Had a cut like Dr Buzz been included on Daft Punk’s 2013 Random Access Memories, few would have cried foul. The more organic aspects of Jamiroquai’s career funk have been superseded by the neon glow of electronics. Vintage synths squelch throughout swirls of disco strings dance up suggestively against Vocoders (Superfresh) or Giorgio Moroder basslines (Shake It On). But on this eighth Jamiroquai album, parallels with the shiny French duo go beyond a penchant for android cool. You might counter that Jamiroquai planted a flag in space long ago, with songs such as Cosmic Girl and Space Cowboy. What are we to make, then, of the surprise return of British acid funkateers Jamiroquai as a Daft Punk tribute act? Band leader Jay Kay, once known for his statement hats, now sports a glowing robot Pokémon headdress in the video for comeback single Automaton, an appealing, synth-driven disco burbler. I mitation, we’re told, is the sincerest form of flattery.
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