About.com Rating



James Lavelle and Richard File were leaders in the movement to push electronic music past the dancefloor with 1998's Psyence Fiction. They have had success in both arenas ever since, and Never Never Land is a new milestone for UNKLE. The album is holds together as an organic artistic statement and not just an exercise in impressive production. It's bold and aggressive at times (Queens of the Stone Age rocker Josh Homme guests on and remixes "Eye For An Eye"), but weary and introspective at others (File's own stirring vocal contribution to "What Are You To Me?").


The music matches the shifts, channeling guitar-fueled punk ethos and blissful, reverb-heavy dub all in the space of an hour. The album's climax is "Reign," a gloriously cinematic collaboration with former Stone Roses singer Ian Brown, who also sang on the Psyence Fiction classic "Be Mine." Enveloped by sweeping strings, jittery pizzicato and breakbeat crescendos, Brown sings "You thought a different day had come/A day you thought the earth was done." Exactly the opposite-if anything, Never Never Land is a soundtrack reflective of the world: Lavelle and File capture the vitality of its highs and lows, its joys and pains.