Cambridge’s boomin’ house letharios, Andy Cato (real name Andrew Cocup) and Tom Findlay have to be the Troy McClures of popular music today. You may remember them from such successful TV commercials as Renault Mégane’s ‘I See You Baby/Shaking That Ass’ and 2001’s ‘If Everybody Looked The Same’ by Mercedez-Benz. You might also remember them from the hit movie ‘Collateral’, ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, previews for Channel 4’s ‘Lost’ and the video game Rayman 3. It’s a Lemon Jelly thing. A Moby thing. A ‘I swear I know the face but I can’t but a name to it’ thing. Like the hum of the hard-drive, the whir of the air-conditioning or a 70s Playtex Bra (‘you don’t even know you’re wearing it’) Groove Armada are one of those ubiquitous things in life that you forget you even remember. Not ‘Where’s Wally?’ exactly, more like ‘Where’s Wally Not?’ And here they are again, skulking around on our blind spot, catching us out from behind with brand spanking new album, ‘Soundboy Rock’ that whilst not really defining new boundaries, setting new bench-marks or pooping new pants it does lurch unpredictably toward being half-decent.
The half that counts includes the goofy Brazilian goober, ‘Get Down’, the Prince-alike, ‘The Things That We Could Share’, ‘The Girls Say’, ‘Drop That Thing’, ‘Song For Mutya’ and ‘From The Rooftops’. The half that doesn’t count is the rest, limping as it does between the swampy funk Madchester of ‘See What You Get’ and the truly awful Mobyness of ‘Paris’.
And I know which arrondissement I’d prefer to be in.