Too often, women are framed as unobtainable objects of desire, whether it’s “angels in their stripper-wear” in “Nights Out in the Jungle, the limoncello-sipping “icy queen” on “Summer Girl,” or a fickle fool who gets her kicks “playing stupid tricks” on “Cloud 9.”
But for all its high-minded aspirations, the album fails to transcend the perspective of a man whose outlook comes across as largely shaped by social status and how he’s viewed in the eyes of others, especially when it comes to the opposite sex. On Automaton, Kay yearns for what’s lost and calls into question his place in a world full of changing tides. The paradox of cyberspace is that it simultaneously connects and isolates us, but this idea, like most topics addressed on the album, goes underexplored. But while Jamiroquai goes bigger and louder with the music on Automaton, the album’s lyrical themes too often come off as oversimplified or half-baked. It’s not even a new angle for Jamiroquai dating back to their mid-‘90s hit “Virtual Insanity,” frontman Jay Kay has often cautioned against human connection getting lost amid the myriad distractions of an increasingly complex society. That’s not an especially novel insight in 2017, when handwringing about the amount of time we spend in front of screens is commonplace. But even as Jamiroquai taps into a robotic aesthetic similar to that of Daft Punk’s seismic Random Access Memories, their retro-futurist trappings are used to illustrate that our increased dependence on technology costs us a piece of our humanity. In lieu of tribal instrumentation and acid-jazz noodling, the group leans heavily on electronic production to supplement their trademark slinky basslines and funk guitar.
Jamiroquai’s first album in seven years, Automaton, aims to modernize the band’s funk-pop sound.
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