Don’t you love surprises? I was flipping through Futureshop’s flyer early last week, looking for bargain games and drooling over televisions that I can’t really afford, when a quick glance at the latest music releases produced “Chemical Brothers - We Are The Night”. After a quick double-take I proceeded to flip out. A new album by one of my favourite bands, and all I had to do was wait a couple of days? I thought it was too good to be true.

It was. The album is a bit disappointing. Why?

It just feels lazy. And it’s not like they’ve lost their touch. Their last album, Push The Button, came after a three-year hiatus, and proved that they still had that Chemical Brothers magic in them. While We Are The Night starts of promisingly, it fails to maintain its momentum through the album.

The album opens in typical style, with a selection of weird and wonderful samples coupled with haunting vocals in No Path To Follow. This quick intro if followed up by the titular We Are The Night. This one get it right on all counts, the build up, the beat, the voice-synthesized lyrics. This is where The Chemical Brothers really work their magic. Saturate works similar magic by taking a simple beat, accenting it with drums, and getting the pace right, to create an incredibly catchy song. Do It Again features nonsensical lyrics that either annoy you, or get stuck in your head. The later in my case.

The songs that really lose the plot are the lyric-heavy ones. They manage to have absolutely flat beats, a complete lack of build up, and uninteresting lyrics. They actually manage to bore me … a Chemical Brothers song, bore me! What’s puzzling is that in the past lyric-heavy songs like Close Your Eyes, Let Forever Be, and Life Is Sweet have been the high points of their respective albums. Why they couldn’t duplicate that magic here is anyones guess.

Having said that, The Salmon Dance is full of lyrics and is a very memorable track. It’s incredibly silly, but that’s exactly why it works.

To save the best for last, Das Spiegel is the stand-out track. It contends with We Are The Night for best track of the album, my choice changing depending on my mood. The carefully paced rhythm effortlessly blends electronic samples with more “natural” sounding instruments, and tops it off with the most wonderful sample of a child giggling. While the beat evolves, it never gets overwhelmingly intense, making it the perfect “chill” song.

So it doesn’t get enough right to make it a good album, but it does have enough to warrant a purchase, simply because the songs they do get right are fantastic. The album isn’t bad by any measure, it’s just disappointing, maybe because I was expecting something on par with their earlier work. While some would argue that it’ll never happen, I think they can do it. They can still pull a really large rabbit out of a very tiny hat. The Chemical Brothers still have the magic in them.