Jamiroquai: Rock Dust Light Star – review

Jay Kay, in a hat resembling a space station, stands on an illuminated dancefloor gurning at the camera. Adoring crowds hem him in. After five years away, Jamiroquai are back, and the cover of this new album is keen to convince prospective listeners that everything is still as one might expect. And so it is: Rock Dust Light Star fillets the heritage of funk and disco in order to serve it to a mainstream audience. There's refocused attention on live instrumentation, and a sound so crisp you could pick out a man adjusting his headpiece behind the horn section. Yet the songwriting rarely matches up to the production. Lyrical cliche abounds (blue skies follow grey clouds, tears fall like rain), but more galling are those frequent moments you hear snatches of music both familiar and interesting, only for them to disappear again.