Rating: NN
Despite all the units Norman Cook has moved while working under his Fatboy Slim alias, the handle is attached to a lot of unfashionable baggage he’d likely prefer to leave in the 90s. So it’s understandable that he’d want to start fresh with a new project known as the Brighton Port Authority. But concocting a ruse about how the album came about after discovering a cardboard box of dusty and undated reel-to-reel tapes of the BPA’s lost studio sessions from the 70s seems foolish and unnecessary if the recordings were good enough to stand on their own merit. Sadly, other than Iggy Pop’s crack at the Monochrome Set tune He’s Frank, they’re not.
As the styles shift from track to track, it becomes clear that part of the reason for the elaborate backstory is to help explain the utter randomness of the songs and semi-celebrity guests. There’s something comically perverse about having Martha Wainwright trying to navigate a rocksteady rhythm or hearing David Byrne getting down with Dizzee Rascal on Toe Jam, particularly since no one involved appears to be playing for laughs.
Top track: He’s Frank (Slight Return)
