2000 Spiller: Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)

A Continental club hit buoyed on hype long before its official UK release, like so many recent dance songs, 'Groovejet' defines the present by looking to the past, this time through the borrowing of the clipped guitar rhythm track from Carol Williams' 1977 track 'Love Is You'. It gives the song an undeniable bounce of summer, but its heat is dampened by a water thin production and scratchy sheen that pales with each repetition. And boy does it repeat - by forty five seconds in, 'Groovejet' has shot every one of its bolts (barring a short middle eight) making the remainder a recycle of the same that could potentially loop to infinity. Or until people get bored. Former The Audience frontwoman Ms Ellis was drafted in purposely to break up the monotony, but while her metallic whine of a voice worked well enough within the confines of her previous band's indie jangle, it fares rather less well on a dance track of celebration, supplying all the emotion to what's meant to be uplifting sunshine of a Cadbury's Smash robot; at least they found great humour in the fact that humans still made mash with potatoes. Ellis, on the other hand, just sounds distant and bored, and if this is her "feel so good" then I'd hate to be around her when she's not. Iconic it may be, in certain circles at least, but I'll wager that most of the goodwill comes filtered through the rose tinted specs of holiday memories past rather than anything the song inherently has to offer. Whatever, there's not enough going on here for my interest to be anything other than passing.