SURRENDER

Chemical Brothers (album)

Although this, their third long player doesn’t quite live up to the expectations raised by Hey Boy Hey Girl, there are some truly gobsmacking pieces of music to be had here. This is, for the most part, exactly how modern dance music should be. There’s changes of style, different speeds, songs merging into one another and the occasional "Guest Slot TM" where the last person you’d ever think of walks into the studio and struts their stuff with the Chemicals. Now and again, it tries to be either too clever or too moody and falls on its backside, but any faults that are to be found are rendered irrelevant by two songs alone. Hey Boy Hey Girl is awesome as you well know, but Out Of Control is even better. It’s a total madman of a tune which blatantly refuses to let up until the half-way point when a New Order-esque guitar riff bursts in (and is that Bernard Sumner singing? Gosh, so it is!) and then it kicks off again. A very very good album indeed, but if Out Of Control isn’t released as a single then there truly is no justice in the world.

TREAT HER LIKE A LADY

Celine Dion

This song displays an astonishing amount of Happy Eater-ness (by that I mean the bloke on the sign shoving his finger down his throat). It’s upbeat, but done very badly. Like Geri Halliwell a couple of weeks ago, she attempts rapping. Like Geri’s end result, this too had me yelling at my stereo trying to make the evil noises go away. This song has also been out since late 1997 on her album Let’s Talk About Love, so all her fans should already have it. This begs the question, what have the rest of us done wrong to have this dumped on us? Answer – not everything bad happens for a reason.