Fatboy Slim
[#] Palookaville (2004)
As bonkers as a Clone Hero mashup.
Reviewed June 23, 2025
I was surprised reading the contemporary reviews for Palookaville. My local FYE closed, and I picked this one up there on extreme discount and found it to be pretty fun to listen to—while the folks with the pens before me rated it half new good ideas and half unfocused, lesser retread of Fatboy Slim's earlier work. Look, I get it. I'm wet behind the ears with this kind of music, and Slim's style is pretty obvious, so I can imagine it having gotten pretty tired by 2004. I also get that there's a fine line between catchy and grating, and what I find stupid fun (like "Slash Dot Dash", henceforth dcb's new theme song), you might just find stupid. All that said, this is my site, so shut up.
A first listen through Palookaville cracks with odd samples—the long-haired freaky people on "Don't Let the Man Get You Down", the aforementioned slash-dot-dash-dot-com, Shel Silverstein and his masochistic baby on, uh, "Mi Bebé Masoquista". Further listens wear the finish off some of the weaker rave-by-numbers type tracks, but reveal a surprising mixture of rock instrumentation and properly sung guest spots (Damon Albarn's hazy narcosis, Justin Robertson's nasal buzzy bass grime, and Bootsy Collins' throwback goofery on the closing cover of Steve Miller's "The Joker") into Slim's electronica. Maybe that's why it works so well for me; these songs are closer to rock songs at their heart, performed instead of sequenced, and rock has no problems at all being stupid and traditional for kicks.
| Essential: | "Don't Let the Man Get You Down", "Wonderful Night", "North West Three" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Mi Bebé Masoquista" |
| Non-Essential: | "Jin Go Lo Ba" |
| Rating: |  |