Imitation, we’re told, is the sincerest form of flattery. What are we to make, then, of the surprise return of British acid funkateers Jamiroquai as a Daft Punk tribute act? Band leader Jay Kay, once known for his statement hats, now sports a glowing robot Pokémon headdress in the video for comeback single Automaton, an appealing, synth-driven disco burbler. You might counter that Jamiroquai planted a flag in space long ago, with songs such as Cosmic Girl and Space Cowboy. But on this eighth Jamiroquai album, parallels with the shiny French duo go beyond a penchant for android cool.
Vintage synths squelch throughout; swirls of disco strings dance up suggestively against Vocoders (Superfresh) or Giorgio Moroder basslines (Shake It On). The more organic aspects of Jamiroquai’s career funk have been superseded by the neon glow of electronics. Had a cut like Dr Buzz been included on Daft Punk’s 2013 Random Access Memories, few would have cried foul. Fast-forward to 2017, and Daft Punk’s continued ubiquity (in cahoots with the Weeknd) means the French duo’s chrome-plated thumbprints remain all over this sound. Automaton seems an audacious comeback, to say the least, but also strangely listenable.
The Dafter these Jamiroquai tracks, the better they sound. Automaton is actually more than slavish: it boasts a couple of clever stumbles that please the ear as they trip the feet. Everything else here is perfectly clubbable pop music. It takes 11 tracks and the racing jazz-funk of Vitamin to get what you might call peak ’Quai, rather than modish electro-funk.
Widen the frame of reference and you could argue that Daft Punk are robo-funk arrivistes, having plundered many sources en route from Kraftwerk to Studio 54. Widen it even more and Automaton is revealed as a canny act of triangulation between a number of funks that are selling well – between Daft Punk and the vintage come-hithers of Pharrell Williams, no stranger to outsized hats. Songs like Cloud 9 and Summer Girl might have come out as Pharrell cuts; few would have adjusted their brims.
Ultimately, you can’t shake the feeling that pop is a giant feedback loop, in which Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield begat Jamiroquai and Pharrell, and the influence of Jamiroquai must have fed, consciously or subconsciously, into the aural landscapes of both Daft Punk and Pharrell (in their 40s, they remember Virtual Insanity first-hand). Perhaps the catalogues of Daft Punk and Pharrell have been acting as a latter-day sink for these sounds, building up herd susceptibility. You can just picture Jamiroquai tenting their fingers offstage, awaiting the moment when the zeitgeist slipped back across the floor towards them.
