“For That Beautiful Feeling” by The Chemical Brothers
Proves the iconic Manchester duo haven’t lost a step.
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Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!
Today’s music pick is the latest from the iconic Manchester duo, proving they haven’t lost a step.
Genre: Electronic, House
Label: Virgin EMI
Release Date: September 8, 2023
Vibe: 🕺💃🏼
I saw the Chemical Brothers live in 2019. It was the Saturday night headlining spot at Montreal’s Osheaga festival, and the vibes, which meshed banger after dancefloor banger with immersive psychedelic visuals, were impeccable—proof that the Manchester duo still had it all these years later. Their latest record, For That Beautiful Feeling, only reinforces and accentuates this anecdotal evidence. It rolls the clocks back to their earlier years, recalling euphoric smash hits like “Hey Boy Hey Girl” and the acid house flourishes from Exit Planet Dust, all without ever feeling like manufactured nostalgia or a greatest hits cannibalization. Like on 2019’s No Geography, these are some of the most inescapable house grooves of the year precisely because they don’t reinvent the wheel. This isn’t a record with any major left turns or moments of WTF-level experimentation, observations typically associated with negative music reviews. But so what? There’s something to be said for the kind of creative consistency you hear on Feeling, where each track is executed with the focus and flair that’s reinvigorated other top-tier dance acts this year. More producers and DJs could stand to take a second and learn from two of the best.
The word “timeless” gets thrown around a lot, mainly through the lens of recency bias, but that was my first reaction hearing “Live Again,” the album’s opener in earnest. The hazy vocals and the warm phaser effects are the perfect build-up to a beat drop that positively rumbles with delight. The energy doesn’t drop on “No Reason,” using jittery synths and sparkling hi-hats to execute another perfect tension-and-release moment with what might be the funkiest beat on the entire LP. With joyous yelps thrown in for good measure, I don’t think I’ve gone a week without listening to the song since I first heard it. And, even when they slow things down slightly on a cut like “Fountains,” the duo keeps the melodies bright and tight. With 12 or so minutes to go on the album, I was struck by a lyrical moment so simple, so direct, it couldn’t be anything but powerful—"Let your heart see the colors all around you/ And the darkness that you fear will disappear.” In a nutshell, it’s not just what a new Chemical Brothers release demands of you but what the dancefloor brings out in all of us. Accepting love and hope with an open heart, letting the toxins that slosh around in your system sweat out your pores as you let your inhibitions go.
It’s undoubtedly one of the best times you’ll have listening to music in 2023.
👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈