No Frills Reviews

A collection of laid back and hook-filled summer jams, which is a bit too sweet for its own good.

On their fourth album, electro funk/soul/disco duo Jungle make another small evolution in their sound. Volcano is 14 tracks of mostly chilled out summer jams, involving an increased array of guests, with features on almost half of the tracks. And, most notably, the album is female fronted, with Lydia Kitto providing vocals on all tracks. This gives the album a real sense of cohesion and leads to some undeniable hooks, but also becomes a flaw.

Kitto’s vocals are aided by some of Jungle’s typical production treatments as they’re usually either spliced up or drenched in an electronic haze. There’s hints of versatility as she occasionally showcases more of a soulful lower register. But it’s the sweet, sweet high notes that are deployed most often to provide the song’s hooks. And they almost always hit the spot, but like anything overly sweet, they become sickly after a while and you wish they’d been used a bit more sparingly.

The album starts off really strong, with an excellent opening 5 song run. Kitto displays some relative aggression on the opener, followed by the high tempo Holding On; a spark of attitude ahead of the sweetness to ensue. Then the run from Candle Flame to I’ve Been In Love provides the album’s highest points and biggest hooks. But towards the midway point, things begin to feel a bit repetitious, and those sweet hooks become slightly grating. Despite there still being good moments in the latter half of the album, it never quite recaptures the early momentum. You can’t help escape the feeling that you’re getting a retread of something you heard a few minutes earlier.

The features do help alleviate that somewhat. The blissed out soul of Good At Breaking Hearts is a late highlight, in no small part to the excellent vocals of JNR WILLIAMS; the juxtaposition of his low croon complimenting Kitto’s higher notes. There’s nothing overly memorable in any of the guest raps, but they all work well in bringing some contrast to the sweetness surrounding them. Channel Tres being the standout on I’ve Been In Love as he makes the song feel like his own. Whereas getting UK hip-hop legend, Roots Manuva, to deliver a fairly anonymous cameo repeating a couple of phrases feels like a flex more than anything.

Taken as individual songs, everything is at least solid here. But those solid moments become lost amongst their familiar surroundings. The mid-late album run from Don’t Play to Problemz represents the weakest spell as they each feel like a minute’s worth of ideas stretched across three. The album is almost a victim of its own success; across 45 minutes it offers up too much of a good thing. Losing a few tracks off its length would have made it much stronger.

The title of one of the standouts, Candle Flame, works as a metaphor for the album. The impressive early spark is still there the whole time and ultimately performing the same trick, but it becomes less impressive as it slowly burns out to its end. A perfectly good collection of tracks, that I can’t imagine I’d ever really feel the urge to revisit as a whole album.

Best Tunes: Holding On, Candle Flame, Dominoes, I’ve Been In Love

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