(Atlantic/Warner)

British downtempo duo lose focus

I don’t blame Zero 7 for attempting to get out of the ‘downtempo’ or ‘chillout’ ghetto. The label has never harmed anyone’s sales (I guess café owners account for a significant market in themselves), but there’s no surer way to become faintly embarrassing than to feature on something like a Buddha Bar or Hôtel Costes compilation. Zero 7, despite having excellent production chops (they are mates with Nigel Godrich) and fantastic taste in guest vocalists (they helped launch the careers of Sia and José González) have found themselves tarred with this label. If their previous album The Garden was an attempt to get rid of the label through subtle reinvention, then Yeah Ghost is the more forceful version of the same project. Ergo this record lurches between exercises that ape groups not at all like Zero 7: Mr. McGee channels Basement Jaxx’s Good Luck, Swing sounds like any twee pop songstress you could name (and is just waiting to be picked up by a mobile phone carrier for an ad campaign), and Everything Up (Zizou) touches on the same highlife influences that make the Dirty Projectors’ work so interesting. Unfortunately, despite the beautiful production vales on display here – core duo Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker are nothing if not consummate manipulators of sound – the songwriting isn’t strong enough to stick, and the stylistic schizophrenia is offputting. And even though their new vocalist Eska Mtungwazi is superb, they won’t maintain their reputation as the guys who discover great new vocalists if nobody can remember their songs.

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CHAD PARKHILL

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