1999 Review

The machine is the star. Almost everything here is built on one drum box, programmed with a swing and a snare crack that thousands of records copied within three years, and layered with cheap keyboards until it sounds enormous. The title track opens with a slowed voice announcing the end of the world and then throws a party about it, with three different singers trading lead lines, which was a structural idea nobody else was using.

Little Red Corvette is the first time he wrote a proper rock ballad and the guitar solo is perfectly judged. Delirious is rockabilly played on synthesisers. Automatic is nine minutes of cold sex. The problem is scale: several tracks run past seven minutes on grooves that were done at four, and side four in particular is a long way to walk for Lady Cab Driver and All the Critics Love U in New York. Essential, era defining, and in need of an edit.