Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands are both now in their early fifties, have just marked 30 years since their debut single, Song to the Siren. They’re celebrating the anniversary with a plush, fully illustrated coffee table book to be published next month. Despite this venerable landmark, as the pair release their tenth album they appear to have mislaid their pipes and slippers. For That Beautiful Feeling bounds chaotically through its 46 minutes like an escaped zoo animal. There is very little point in attempting to listen to it sitting down.
The album begins and ends with the same sound: the French singer Halo Maud repeating the album title while her voice is warped and stretched, meaning that it works well to play the whole thing on a neverending loop, a spinning fairground ride without an exit sign. She’s one of only two guest singers this time, the other being Beck, who also sang the dreamy closer to the duo’s 2015 album Born in the Echoes. This time his song, Skipping Like a Stone, is more energetic and poppy, though it’s worth keeping in mind that any Chemical Brothers track that passes for a pop song will still contain at least a dozen noises that sound as if they were airlifted from Mars.
