Their Law: The Singles

The Prodigy:
Their Law: The Singles

[XL; 2005]
Rating: 9.1
Liam Howlett fittingly called his "group" the Prodigy, even if everyone in the U.S. only remembers the guys with the Union Jack shirts and bonsai haircuts. In America, they enlivened an 18-month stretch of our lives with frat electronica, surprising no one when they disappeared forever. In the UK, they were one of the biggest pop bands of the 1990s, epitomizing a whole mess of sociocultural malarkey. That they can be both is a big chunk of Howlett's "genius," and Their Law is the kind of all-killer/no-filler collection that only someone with half an eye on the avant-garde and the other one-and-a-half in the gutter can produce.

Early Prodigy tracks are a bit like chasing your Lucky Charms with chocolate milk. "Charly" sampled a kiddie safety PSA along with an oompah-loompah synth riff and, in England, went all the way to No. 2. "Jericho" and "Everybody in the Place" speed headlong like crash test dummies on runaway breakbeats. Best-ever Prodigy track is "Out of Space", which throws Max Romeo and Kool Keith into the back of a Jeep while Howlett does donuts in the shopping mall parking lot. Personally, I could never part with all of the malformed, day-glo vinyl mutants from the early days of rave, but for the rest of you, their Experience album will work a treat.

Howlett quickly saw the writing on the wall for the one-hit-blunder dance single as a career-- as well as sensing the pop limitations of the underground (which probably wouldn't have him anyway). The result was the 1993's Music for the Jilted Generation. Suddenly, the former clown prince of pacifier rave was being hailed as an auteur, ditching the squeaky voices and writing a quasi-concept record about the Criminal Justice Act.

Jilted has taken a bit of a reverse drubbing in recent years from Experience partisans as a cheesy "maturation" move. But the singles are still great, chewy with cornball menace, though not quite as over the top as those of a few years later. Guitars make their first appearance on a Prodigy record here, on "Their Law", and "Voodoo People" and "Poison" are hairy, greasy cousins to "proper" techno. Best of all is "No Good (Start the Dance)"-- jungle in slo-mo replay.

1997's Fat of the Land went to No. 1 in the U.S., which prompted ad execs, record company PR stooges, and Spin to foolishly presume "electronica" was poised to clean house in the floundering final days of alt-rock. "Firestarter" sounds like Trent Reznor in one of his all-too-rare moments of self-aware humor, like the Bomb Squad at +5 with a pink-haired British bulldog bellowing about how tuff he is. "Breathe" is just "Firestarter 2 (the Quickening)", And then there's "Smack My Bitch Up", which divorced from its "controversial" video is a really good big beat track.

And then...nothing. For eight long years. Finally, outta nowhere, came Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned in 2004. Maxim Reality and Keith Flint (the shouty ones) were MIA. It got panned, stiffed (at least in the states), and generally gave no indication that Howlett wasn't actually washed up. Maybe it's just surrounding context, but the Always singles on Their Law actually sound pretty darn good-- "Girls", especially, is awesome, like crunk IDM or something that sounds similarly awful on paper but comes out sounding like an air-raid warning on Howlett's laptop.

Bonus disc edition is largely useless, a string of live tracks (eh) and B-sides (eh-to-hey-not-bad). Remixes range from "why?" (Audio Bully's take on "Out of Space") to "holy farking hell" (Pendulum's blitzkrieg drum & bass rework of "Voodoo People"). Sadly missing: Their wind tunnel and WMD's remix of Method Man's "Release Yo' Delf" (second best-ever Prodge moment). But the main disc is satisfying like a 72-oz. steak or half a case of beer: Knowing you should know better just adds to the fun.

- Jess Harvell, October 31, 2005