Come With Us (Limited Edition)

1	Come With Us 4:57
2	It Began in Afrika 6:16
3	Galaxy Bounce 3:27
4	Star Guitar 6:27
5	Hoops 6:31
6	My Elastic Eye 3:41
7	The State We're In 6:26
8	Denmark 5:07
9	Pioneer Skies 4:04
10	The Test 7:46

Barnes & Noble

Having proven their songwriting savvy with the pop-friendly Surrender -- which fashioned recognizable tunes from techno's toolbox of old-school breaks, jackhammer tempos, and psychedelic ambient breakdowns -- the Chemical Brothers split the difference with Come with Us, an intense album that's as much a DJ set as a collection of electronica songs. Getting this party started with the bouncy four-on-the-floor of the title track, it's apparent that the jagged days of Big Beat are over for good, and the Brothers are house-ier than ever. Even the hardest techno tracks are seasoned with Paradise Garage funk: the clattering timbales of "It Began in Afrika" alludes to hip-hop's prehistory as a disco-era offshoot and comes complete with a Soul Train-worthy vocal hook. Which doesn't mean the Brothers have gotten lazy -- "Hoops," which samples the Association, drops an acoustic guitar line to mind-bending effect, and the more songlike tracks show an even greater appreciation for dynamics and colors. Once again, Tom and Ed employ star vocalists -- the Verve's Richard Ashcroft and folkie Beth Orton, this time -- but the tracks are more identifiably Chemicals than on Surrender, where the Brothers drafted Bernard Sumner to mime New Order and Noel Gallagher to ape Oasis, The closer, Ashcroft's wild-eyed reading of "The Test," frames the link between Britain's shambolic rockers and e-addled ravers far more effectively than did Surrender's Oasis collaboration. When the former Verve frontman asks, "Did I pass the acid test?" fans can't help but give him -- and the Chemical Brothers -- the thumb's up. Mark Schwartz

All Music Guide

Don't call it a comeback (they never left) or a return to the underground (there's still a spot reserved in Britain's Top Ten). Still, after disappointing critics and fans with increasingly crossover material, Chemical Brothers Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons returned with a tighter, more danceable record, including fewer rock star collaborations (only two, shunted toward the end) and a lead single ("It Began in Afrika") introduced almost a year before, on white label only, for crucial DJ ground support. From the vocal sample introducing the opener ("behold...they're coming back"), it's clear Rowlands and Simons know the importance of this fourth album, and it detonates like a bomb blast, as though the duo knew that Come With Us had to be bigger and badder than all the bombastic breaks they'd dropped in the past. "It Began in Afrika" is next up, with percussion-heavy tribal-house charging into trance-state acid and a warping vocal sample repeating the title. After the opener, "Galaxy Bounce" is the best track here, locking into a nice Chic groove and alternating a strutting drum break with stop-time turntablism. The vocal features are solid but ignorable; Beth Orton's "The State We're In" is a predictable, pleasant folkie jam, and Richard Ashcroft's closer, "The Test," a pseudo-mystical breakbeat epic. The Chemical Brothers' best studio work has a kinetic energy and pace borrowed from the flow of their DJ sets. After forgetting the key on 1999's Surrender amidst handling all of the celebrity guests, they got back to business with Come With Us. John Bush