Come With Us\nChemical Brothers\nAstralwerks Records\nThe party, of course, has been over for some time now. The hosts were Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, the British duo better known as The Chemical Brothers. In their heyday, the Brothers managed to invent (or at least mainstream) big beat techno on their 1995 debut album Exit Planet Dust, perfect it on 1997's Dig Your Own Hole and strip it down to the bare essentials on 1999's Surrender. But by the time of that third album's release, the genre was already being co-opted by more gimmicky TV ad-ready artists like Fatboy Slim, who mistook a hooky sample for a good groove and completely lost the plot. Meanwhile, British dance floors moved onto two-step and garage and God knows what else, and the rest of us just had a good time with Daft Punk.\nSo what does the first Chemical Brothers album of the 21st Century have to offer? Well, for one thing, an adrenaline-pumping opening number (the title track) with a taut string sample and the big-drum sound that Surrender, for the most part, left behind. It's almost too exciting -- how do you maintain momentum for another 45 minutes? The tight, percussive bounce of "It Began in Afrika," the second track, isn't a bad answer to that question. Later on, "My Elastic Eye" combines skittering beats and a head-drilling buzz melody that sounds like one of Warp Records' avant-garde techno workouts married to a more standard dance beat.\nThe Chems stick to themselves through the first half of the album, bringing in the prerequisite guest stars -- Beth Orton and ex-Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft -- only towards the end. Orton's "The State We're In" is a welcome acoustic slowdown that turns into a house stomp three-fourths of the way through. Ashcroft's cameo, if nothing else, reminds us that he's still alive ("Can you hear me?" he asks. Yes, we can -- now make a new album).\nThe obvious complaint about Come With Us is that there's nothing new here, and it's a valid one. The album is a subtle tweaking of past successes, with just enough new sounds and beats thrown in to avoid a total retread. Five years ago, this stuff was fresh and exciting -- today, it's just exciting. In the middle of a typical January record release drought, exciting is more than enough.\n
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