Chase And Status - No More Idols
- Written by Stephen Ferdinando
There are probably people out there better equipped to write an article about Chase & Status than I, having only really discovered them within the last three years. But this does of course means I’ve been here to witness drum & bass and dubstep’s rise to mainstream success, and its slip away from it. The speed with which the genres have grown in popular demand is astonishing, and what is even more so is how quickly they’ve become un-cool again. Chase & Status have been a large part of that, regularly realising new music that experiments with new sounds.
More than anything else, these songs are pop songs. This shift to popular chart topping music was a conscious decision by Saul "Chase" Milton and Will "Status" Kennard, and their almost instant success at it proves the excellence of the song writing ability. The problem is whilst these songs do function well as pop songs, there is a slight feeling that the fans who have always loved the pair have been left behind. Long gone are the days of ‘In Love’, ‘Take Me Away’, and ‘Hurt You.’ Instead, No More Idols tends to draw largely on the success of their Plan B collaboration Pieces, and their post More Than A Lot anthem ‘Heatbeat.’
The album’s best moments come from its singles. ‘Blind Faith’ is a tune that begs us to remember it when summer comes, and ‘End Credits’ and ‘Let You Go’ have long been on our iPods. ‘Hypest Hype’ features possible the angriest man in music, Tempa T, who just wants to bottle people for standing on his shoes. The album is littered modestly with collaborations with some of Britain’s most interesting pop acts, including Dizzee Rascal, Tinie Tempah, Cee Lo Green, Embrace, and, obviously, Plan B. The albums numerous collaborations with UK grime artists all hit at the same point, and by the time Dizzee finally gets his go, we’re already a bit bored.
To sum up, No More Idols is a good pop record, with guests from the top of the British mainstream scene. But it is still a pop album. The albums anthemic moments are by far its best, tracks like ‘Time’ for example, but they feel so arbitrarily assigned that, for me, they loose their impact. We can only wish good luck to the boys as they’ve achieved exactly what they set out to do, but just a part of me still wishes for the old days, however briefly I saw those old days for.