Lo Fidelity Allstars, Don't Be Afraid Of Love (Skint/Columbia) 9-
On their 1999 debut How To Operate With A Blown Mind, Lo Fidelity Allstars capitalized on the big beat style pioneered by The Chemicals just before Fatboy Slim beat it to death. Three years later, they've wisely gone beyond the Brit disco formula by embracing soul, funk and R&B, evoking a pure 70s sound with the pop tracks "Feel What I Feel" and the downbeat title track with R&B horns slowed down to Massive Attack tempo, repeating the mantra, "Sign of the times." "Deep Ellum…Hold On" features vocals from Super-Collider's James Lidell, and samples The Ohio Players' "Rattlesnake." The exercises in disco-funk excess on this and "Cattleprod," "Lo Fi's In Ibiza" and "Tied To The Mast" are a bit heavy-handed and obvious. The album's strength lies in the slower grooves, like "Somebody Needs You," featuring love man vocals by Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs/Twilight Singers) who seems to be making a bid to be the white Barry White. "On The Pier" is a slick slow-burner with Bootsy Collins fronting what sounds like an all-star collaboration between 80s techno-popsters The The and Shriekback, with backing vocals by The Brides of Funkestein and a sample of Joe Tex's "Oh Me Oh My." "Just Enough" slows things down even further to somnambulistic lullaby proportions. "Dark Is Easy" starts just as mellow, sampling Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, building with some bongo drums, hip-hop vocals, shouts, and then enters a hypnotically elliptical loop of a chorus of "yeahs", peaking in a din of whizzing synths and more shouts, finally coming down in a soft afterglow. Program them with Isaac Hayes' "Hyperbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic," Parliament's "The Goose," Outkast's "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" & "Liberation," and you've got yourself a failsafe mash mix.
