Honestly I don’t feel very strongly about Basement Jaxx in either direction. But lately I’ve been listening to “Where’s Your Head At” a bunch. It’s a very good song, mostly thanks to the firepower of its fully armed and operational Gary Numan sample. But it’s as though they were unsatisfied with merely centering their song around one of the most monstrous synth lines ever constructed and felt compelled to add a bunch of unnecessary junk to it, like some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The single edit in the video above is better than the full-length version in this regard, but it still gets a little too goofy with the funny voices. And the full-length version has about 45 unnecessary seconds in the middle and another 45 unnecessary seconds at the end. It’s not like I’ve listened to a ton of Basement Jaxx, but pretty much everything I’ve heard is like this in some way–just too busy. I understand that this is considered “maximalism,” but for me it’s clutter, or mania, or trying too hard, or something else unappealing, and when you’ve divorced it from a colossal Numanism it’s not something I’m interested in hearing at all.
It’s like this post was a tulip bulb you planted in 2001, and you assumed it died when you ran over it with the riding mower, only to see it suddenly appear today. “Where’s Your Head At” is like seeing the American version of The Ring first…if you see it first, you’re likely to find the original plodding and slow.
But no one can hate Romeo from that album. And if you hate maximalism, whatever the fuck that is, you’re gonna hate Justice. But I recommend seeing their road/concert documentary first–which is fucking phenomenal–before counting them out. That’s an amazing album to play Galaga Legions alongside.
You should check out the Pitchfork review (I know, I KNOW) of BJ’s “Scars.”
“In a recent post to his blog on the New Yorker website, the critic Sasha Frere-Jones made a case for his poor track record in predicting public taste by pointing out that he had Basement Jaxx, not Daft Punk, pegged to be a major crossover act at the start of the decade. His reasoning was that, while Daft Punk mined a fairly narrow robot-funk aesthetic, Basement Jaxx emphasized human voices and cherry-picked sounds from a wide range of genres, which should logically open them up to a broader audience. The opposite was true. Whereas Daft Punk’s M.O. was consistent and instantly understood, Basement Jaxx’s style was constantly shifting and lacked a public face. The duo may have produced some of the most transcendentally brilliant dance music of the decade, but their eclectic taste and resistance to shtick may well have kept them from attaining widespread commercial success…..”
Wow, that Numan track is brain-meltingly good.
Like the video for the Jaxx song more than the song itself.
Chris: I also do not like Justice. And my friend Matthew wrote that review!
Matt: Numan’s amazing. And yeah, the video’s really good.
I always thought Where’s Your Head At was not much more than a slick sounding novelty song, one of the interludes from Remedy strung out to track length.
Even though its title and “chorus” is basically raver bait, its popularity has always confused me.
I don’t think it’s hard to figure out at all, Sam–it has two King Kong vs. Godzilla-level MONSTER hooks in the Gary Numan sample and the title phrase.
I’ve been on board since Remedy and have loved every album since to varying degrees, although I do agree that the busy-ness of later albums has been a bit distracting at times. But still: when they’re on, they’re on, and simply in terms of singles they’ve produced as fine an assortment of dance hits this last decade and a half as any other group I can mention.
That said, yeah, Where’s Your Head At was definitely overplayed, and nowhere near the best track off Rooty.