Consumer Guide Album

The Chemical Brothers: Dig Your Own Hole [Astralwerks, 1997]
Their secret isn't technowizardry, formal daring, or Lord help us eclecticism. As with so many pop wunderkinds, it's spirit--generous, jubilant, unfazed by industrial doom, in love with energy and sound. Noel Gallagher only wishes he had their heart; they say more with a borrowed catch-phrase--"Who is this doin' this type of alphabetapsychedelic funkin'?"--than he can with a whole album of verse-chorus-verse. Of course it matters that they're not retro. But it matters even more that their futurism is neither exclusionary nor puritanical. A-