Album Review: Odyssey by Fischerspooner

With the Scissor Sisters taking their campy rock revolution manifesto and running all the way up the charts with it, Fischerspooner returned in 2005 with surprisingly little hype, save that their sophomore release is "more organic" and "more rock. " Odyssey is about as "rock" as New Order's synthier releases, but they're right when they say "more organic," in so much as Fischerspooner sound like a band here, one that's able to accommodate guests and deliver Linda Perry songs with conviction. Hitmaker Perry works with the duo on three breezy, "human" numbers here -- the hippy-trippy "Happy," the even more so "All We Are," and the widescreen road number "A Kick in the Teeth" -- and while they're all very pleasing, it's the handclapping funkster "Never Win" that helps the band overcome the sophomore jinx more than anything else on the album.

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Casey Spooner and Warren Fischer's first album met a sobering fate: their much-ballyhooed £1m deal was followed by commercial oblivion, which helped drive Ministry of Sound into the red and their A&R man out of a job. A second, then, would seem like about as good an idea as Heaven's Gate 2. But here it is, and unapologetically grand it is too, numbering David Byrne, Madonna producer Mirwais, hitmaker-for-hire Linda Perry and the late Susan Sontag among its collaborators.

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