Push the Button

If it wasn't for the revolutionary artwork, it would be easy to suspect that the Chemical Brothers were parodying their roles as electronic musicians with that album title. After all, people have accused the genre of sounding redundant for years. But while contemporaries like the Prodigy and Fatboy Slim fall by the wayside, on their fifth studio album Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons sound positively reinvigorated, as the dreamy textures of 2002's Come With Us give way to a set of sharper, more focused songs, from the politically charged "Left Right" to the wide-screen "Close Your Eyes." It's epic stuff, particularly when A Tribe Called Quest rapper Q-Tip magically appears to give lead-off track "Galvanize" a vintage hip-hop kick. But because this is as much about the future as the past, the British duo also recruits Kele Okereke of underground punk-funk stars Bloc Party and the London vocal group The Magic Numbers to help push things forward. — Aidin Vaziri.