Blue Album marks the one last hurrah of the Hartnoll brothers as they part ways to pursue solo projects. Sadly, this last hurrah turns out to be rather unsatisfying. It isn’t until the final moments of Blue Album that Orbital rise to the occasion and deliver a track worthy of their reputation. It’s a shame really. In many ways The Altogether would have made a much more fitting epitaph, its multiple personalities all jostling for centre stage representing all of those fun projects Orbital must have always wanted to record and release but never quite fitted on their previous records. And whilst The Altogether may not have been exactly popular, due to its playful, free-form and almost novelty style, at least it was enjoyable.
Blue Album is sadly rather generic and forgettable. Very few tracks have any particularly memorable hooks or the stylistic flair that gave great albums like In Sides and The Brown Album their distinctive character. It seems as though everything on Blue Album has been done before, either by Orbital or by other artists already, and done better. Perhaps it fails because it tries to be so low key and, in places, almost lo-fi. The detailed production values that enriched previous Orbital offerings seem somehow absent here, with perhaps only “Tunnel Vision” and “Pants” coming anywhere close to their usual high standards. It’s also particularly worrying when you find yourself reaching for the skip button halfway through the first track on a CD, and sadly, it’s exactly that action that the twanging of the loping album opener “Transient” provokes. There are some notably pleasant tracks: “Pants” more than compensates for “Transient” and would have made a much better first impression, and “Tunnel Vision” is almost unique on this album for actually displaying some energy and forward momentum. But the ration of bland to good is just too high to overlook.
“Lost” should be mournful and melancholic, but the heavy-handed, distorted thump-thump of the annoying bassline over-powers this feeling. “Acid Pants” is downright ridiculous, right down to the collaboration with Sparks which amounts to nothing more than an almost embarrassingly silly one line vocal that’s repeated until it becomes almost unbearable. Both “Bath Time” and “Easy Serv” have been crowbarred in between dancier tracks on the album and thus sound overly twee, jarring and anachronistic. It would help if they were either funny or original but both are unfortunately neither. “Easy Serv” outstays it’s welcome by at least three minutes whilst “Bath Time” sounds almost exactly like Plone, but without the attention to detail, the genuine flair for retro or the enchanting melody.
“You Lot” is a blatant and near shameless attempts to create another cult classic along the lines of “Satan,” anchoring itself entirely to a suitably shouty sample of Christopher Eccleston. Its incessant boing-boing-boinging mediates against any dance-floor potential, though the track improves in its closing few minutes. “One Perfect Sunrise,” on the other hand, does almost everything a classic Orbital track should. The melancholy, wordless vocals of Lisa Gerrard have been carefully crafted to evoke the warmest, most nostalgic memories of Orbital gigs of old whilst reminding the listener that the end is nigh. It’s a pity they weren’t able to collaborate with Alison Goldfrapp one last time.
Certain tracks on Blue Album are conspicuous by their absence. Why “What Happens Next” was consigned to the budget UK two-track One Perfect Sunrise CD single release and not included here is a mystery. And why on earth was live favourite “Initiation” not included? It’s on the Japanese version, sure, but nowhere else. Ever. Sadly, Blue Album serves up the confirmation that the Hartnoll brothers were right in their decision to bring the Orbital project to an end and work on solo efforts instead.
Still, whilst Blue Album may indeed be rather disappointing, at least many Orbital fans were lucky enough to attend some absolutely classic final live performances – Orbital’s true last hurrah, and they will be missed.
Blue Album is out now on ATO Records.
