Jamiroquai – review

"This is a very old song that you might remember," says Jay Kay, resplendent in a capacious, purple-feathered Native American head-dress, as he introduces a decade-old slice of lissom Jamiroquai funk called You Give Me Something. "In the early days, the newspapers used to call me a skinny youth. They always said it: 'Skinny youth.'"

Nineteen years into his band's existence, Kay still cuts an impressively trim figure, even if his face betrays his 41 years and his party-loving lifestyle. Musically, however, little has changed in Jamiroquai's world. The sole survivor of the short-lived acid jazz scene that spawned them, they may now routinely fill arenas, but close your eyes and tonight's slick set could easily have been timewarped from the Wag Club circa 1993.

Much like Simply Red, Jamiroquai have long been shunned by music's tastemakers for a perceived naffness, and have shown their utter disregard for this critical snobbery by getting bigger and bigger. Like Mick Hucknall, Kay has always refused to let critical scorn dampen his musical enthusiasms and, in his case, his cosmic inclinations. His current stage set sees the planetary solar system suspended from the roof and whirling above his head.

They draw heavily on their recent, seventh album, Rock Dust Light Star, and on 2001's A Funk Odyssey while completely ignoring the intervening record, 2005's obsessively over-produced Dynamite, which Kay now considers "too sterile". The new record has consequently seen a return to gnarled funk-soul workouts that can drag: you feel that you have grown a beard by the end of Smoke and Mirrors, a song about being trapped in a loveless marriage that sounds precisely as appetising.

Mostly, though, Kay is a sharp and entertaining presence, giving the almost exclusively white crowd exactly what they want by ladling out provincial-disco-friendly numbers like Cosmic Girl and Deeper Underground by the yard. His 11-piece band are militarily slick, while limber, light-on-their-feet anthems like Return of the Space Cowboy remind you precisely why Kay has prospered for two decades: because now and then, when he feels like it, he writes fantastic, chart-friendly pop songs.

The material remains samey, and the vintage-funk licks and lubricious wah-wah guitar can pall, but the reliably lairy Kay is patently having a ball. As Jamiroquai encore with their recent single, White Knuckle Ride, a song about the pressures of fame, the big screen above the stage shows this unrepentant playboy pop star indulging his latest hobby of piloting a helicopter. As ever, you grudgingly tip your multicoloured hat at his sheer chutzpah.