Welcome

He makes his many sonic guises come to odd, bouncy life. All of which helps make Welcome the kind of album that sounds more whole after it's been put away for a while, then returned to circulation just to see what sticks in the memory.

Consistency isn't Pants' strong point, and the latter half of the CD falters with a spattering of sparse instrumentals that feel more like skeletal after-thoughts than fully developed creations. At the grandest moments, Pants accomplishes his mission of re-creating the dance-happy fun funk of Chromeo and Cameo, and the cardboard-spinning electro boogie of Arabian Prince and Egyptian Lover.

James Pants may well develop a style or voice of greater substance with future releases. But, as of now, his reliance on his synthesizer aptitude is too repetitive, too flat, and too conventional to convey much meaning or purpose.

The record could perhaps do with more of these vocal interjections, as it's packed with mostly instrumental grooves. However what there is comes extremely well layered and with a careful structure, well thought through but also retaining the potential for improvisation and a chance to cut loose.

He’s much better at showing off his record collection on the well-chilled "Ice Castles," which purports to be a James Pants mix disc.

The problem with Welcome is that it suffers from a lack of variety. But, if you’re into the electro-dance scene, that might not bother you.

Though Welcome doesn't quite congeal into an artistic statement--it's more like a collection of promising demos--Pants flips his shopworn styles with more panache than the average bedroom producer.

The result is impressive genre prowess--especially when he invites Austin unknown Deon Davis (a/k/a Element 7d) to contribute some post-rap boogie on 'Crystal Lite,' or rips off Wham’s 'Everything She Wants' on 'I Choose You'--but Pants might still be flexing prematurely.

Welcome is necessarily all over the place--and that place is pretty damn funky. [July 2008, p.108]

It's hard to actually consider Welcome a bad album, mostly because it has this inexplicable likability: It's bizarrely comic without coming across as cheap irony, and it's pretty clear Pants lays down these semi-instrumental jams because he wants to have fun and make noise with some once-expensive, now-dated (and, subsequently, currently underheard) musical machinery.