As the title implies,
Jamiroquai's eighth studio album, 2017's
Automaton, is a dancefloor-friendly production inspired as much by lead singer
Jay Kay's famous love of sports cars as
Giorgio Moroder's synth and drum machine-heavy productions of the '70s and '80s. More broadly, the album also fits into
Kay's fascination with the effect technology has both positively and negatively on our lives and on the planet (i.e., 1993's "Emergency on Planet Earth" and 1996's "Virtual Insanity"). Which is to say, this is pretty much the same album
Kay has been making since at least 2001's A Funk Odyssey. Here, we get several catchy club-ready singles ("Automaton" and "Cloud 9") front-loaded with a handful of inventive album tracks designed for
Kay to rock the European tour circuit. To those ends,
Automaton works quite well, finding
Kay in fluid vocal form and living up to his image as a global, time-traveling, playboy magic-man. Helping
Kay conjure the funk magic this time is longtime keyboardist
Matt Johnson, who co-produced and co-wrote much of the album. While previous outings found
Jamiroquai evincing
Moroder's slick robo-funk,
Automaton is the closest they've come to making an outright
Moroder-style album. Which means that the album plays well with the disco end of their output (think "Little L" or "Cosmic Girl"). In that sense,
Automaton fits nicely alongside similarly inclined works like
Daft Punk's own
Moroder homage Random Access Memories and
Two Door Cinema Club's
Gameshow. With
Kay's lithe croon at the center, cuts like the aforementioned "Cloud 9" and the steamy "Something About You'' are black-light dancefloor bangers full of pulsing synths, icicle-crisp guitars, and the occasional goosebump-inducing orchestral string flourish. Also infectious are tracks like the
Rick James does '70s Europop number "Hot Property" and the humid disco anthem "Summer Girl," replete with a chorus of female backing singers. There are few bands who play classic disco-funk with as much genuine love for the genre and care in the productions as
Kay and
Jamiroquai. Ultimately, it's that sense of love and good vibes that drives much of
Automaton. ~ Matt Collar