Grains (Bonus Track Version)

Boozoo Bajou's evolution from electronica-influenced chillout act to retro-minded producers releasing their "most organic album so far" seems a common way for trip-hop/downbeat acts to grow old. The Nuremberg duo's third effort, Grains arrived just months after Jazzanova's throwback album Of All the Things, but rather than soul, Boozoo called upon the Laurel Canyon sound for inspiration and dropped names like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Jackson Browne as influences. The good news is that Grains is no studied exercise in nostalgic re-creation and the voice of the duo still comes through, just as it did previously during Boozoo's flirtation with reggae, jazz, and Cajun music. Members Florian Seyberth and Peter Heider naturally inject such a European feel into their arrangements that the opening "Flickers" with guest vocalist Bernd Batke sounds as much like Robert Wyatt as it does '70s California. "Sign" is as American-flavored as any given Paul Weller record thanks to the full-bodied voice of Eric Duperray and a horn section straight out of the Style Council. Other traditional songs that succeed are the breezy "Same Sun" and the very laid-back title track, but what makes the album an overall success are the tracks with the German titles, aka the moody instrumentals. Save a couple Jamaican samples and electronic moments left over from Boozoo's early days, the atmospheric pieces could be a lazy afternoon hangout session where a 1971 Pink Floyd are captured sharing the summer breeze with a 1975 Fleetwood Mac. All these downbeat tone poems are casually dispersed among the songs, making for an album that meanders and drifts as much as it comforts and soothes. Take the undemanding Grains as Boozoo stylishly growing older or tastefully becoming untroubled.