Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars

Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, despite a couple of missteps, is brimming with life.

Vigorous and wise, this is dance music for grown-ups, with Cook keenly aware that any number of spritely garage and trance chancers have stepped in while he's been away making babies. Rather than match them in the disco stakes, he's re-grouped and drawn on previously concealed depths instead.

Little on Halfway is as immediately gratifying, or even as immediate, as its predecessor's hits, but that's not to say that any of these 11 new songs might not meet the same fate.... The Fatboy Slim assembly-line music machine is in full effect, and anyone looking for substance needn't bother. But to call this collection of sweet nothings half-assed would imply that there was much going on to begin with: The disc is business as usual, a big load of disposable fun and funk that's fluffier than cotton candy and just as weighty.

Slim's Halfway only reaches heaven twice (Macy Gray's two star turns), and otherwise trolls, not in a gutter, but in what feels like interminable traffic. Most of Halfway's songs extend past the five minute mark, and like a movie that hasn't felt the firming up of a good editor's hands, they feel way too long. If guest vocalist Macy Gray hadn't shown up for Fatboy's party, Halfway might be the year's biggest letdown.

With a deeper, more mature sound, Halfway sounds like the work of a producer in mid-career crisis making music inspired by the dancefloor, but not shackled to it. [12/2000, p.89]