THE SPOOKS - FASTER THAN YOU KNOW

Three or four years ago, I happened to catch a video called “Things I’ve Seen”. I’d never heard the song before, and had no idea whose video it was. The music was hot, though, and it caught my attention. Then, Laurence Fishburne walks across the screen, the lone non-band member in the video. I called my boy Debbie over to check it out, and we were hypnotized. Our heads were in a perpetual bob, and our eyes were lit up like streetlights. The video ends, and we were now fans of The Spooks.
Fast-forward to now. Their second disc, Faster Than You Know, arrives on my doorstep. It’s like Christmas for me and my stereo. Press "play", and it sounds like the same old Spooks, but, well, it’s different. Makes no sense, I know. But check it: Ming Xia still kidnaps your ears with her hypnotic vocals. Mr. Booka-T, Hypno, and Joe Davis still take turns on the mic, blending together their completely unique voices and rhyme styles into one cohesive Spooks unit. The songs still reflect life, bouncing from topic to topic, beautiful to tragic. And they still keep your head nodding until the last boom-bap hits. But it's not a rehash of the debut album. It sounds new.
What the Spooks do best is flow from track to track while maintaining an overall vibe to the record. The album starts off on a positive note, expounding upon the virtues of love with J5's Chali 2na on “Faster Than You Know”. They interject a little hilarity, mocking the music industry in hilarious skits like, “A Hit", “Bill Shady’s Office", and “My Favorite Song”. And they even get real damn sobering on the tune “Deadbeat”, which lets each Spooks member address deadbeat dads in their own way. And when it ends, you don’t feel like you just suffered through another flash in the pan pop record. If you really listened to it, you heard a musical piece of art from four young artists.
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