The Critics: Is it trip-hop? Is it funk? No, it's Morcheeba

ROCK

SUN-DAPPLED, balmy, upbeat, funky, seductive ... not the first adjectives you'd apply to trip-hop, so maybe Morcheeba were right all along to complain about being jammed in that particular pigeonhole. Their blissful second album, Big Calm (Indochina), requires a new label - I'd favour "big beat having a sit down on a beach" - plus a few non-Portishead points of comparison: obvious candidates would be Beck, Neneh Cherry and David Byrne, whose last album was produced by the trio. Beck doesn't sound particularly like Morcheeba, but both acts are equally eclectic. Big Calm meanders through country, reggae, and very British folk music; and Ross Godfrey is happy to play a sitar and a lizard-scrabbling-across-the-dusty-highway slide guitar on the same song.

Also, just as Beck's King Slacker image can overshadow the long hours he must put into assembling his musical jigsaws, Morcheeba's preternatural mellowness has led to their sound being condemned as bland background noise, even though there's a lot going on beneath the Sade-smooth surface. The pleasure of their show at the Shepherd's Bush Empire last weekend

was witnessing how subtly the many layers came together: Ross's magical guitar; his brother Paul's beats and effects; the consummate band; and, for one song, a man playing the saw (I couldn't hear any sound from it, but I appreciated the thought).

On top of all that, the sleepily enticing voice of Skye Edwards brushes the air with some exceptionally fragrant melodies, her chilled-out tones matched by an unaffected, glowing charm. In an un-trip-hoppish sort of way, she shakes her hips in slow motion, and passes sweetly ingenuous comments on the gig: "I'm really excited. It's gonna sound lovely," she murmurs before "Col", featuring her and a string-and-brass quintet. "I love that song," she grins after a beautiful version of Gershwin's "Summertime". When a rapper joins the throng, she says, "This is a laugh, innit, eh?"

And most of the time it is. But there are a few songs on which Morcheeba are so wrapped up in what they're doing, so laidback and introspective that you wonder if your presence is required at all, and the mind drifts off in a different direction from the music. Remember, Morcheeba: body- popping, audience participation, choreography and spangly suits never did Beck any harm. And, if nothing else, they'd guarantee you were never mentioned in the same sentence as Portishead again.

There aren't many comedians who parody the formulaic incidental music of children's animations. In fact, there's only one, and that's Bill Bailey. I can see him now, standing at his keyboard, scattering random xylophone notes as he impersonates a cartoon narrator: "And so, the rain began to fall ..." Then I open my eyes, and it's not a Bill Bailey sketch at all: it's Tortoise, Chicago's acclaimed "post-rock" collective.

Post-rock, by the way, is not what you listen to while you deliver mail. It is the future of popular music as we know it: a cerebral, multi-cultural, experimental sound, freed from the shackles of verses, choruses, backbeats, and all the other things we liked about popular music in the first place. In short, Tortoise are the most pretentious band in the world. There's no singing on their records, but when you read the song titles - "The Suspension Bridge at Iguazu Falls", "A Simple Way to Go Faster than Light that Does Not Work" - you're thankful that they aren't let loose on lyrics.

Having said that, their third album, TNT (City Slang), isn't half bad. Or rather, it is half bad. Half the tracks cannot be described without using the word "noodling", and should really be listened to only by those people who are growing out of indie but don't have the courage to make the leap to jazz. When you come to the fourth song that's built on that repetitive pitter-patter on the xylophone, you wonder whether these so- called avant-gardists have any more colours on their palette than the average pre-post-rock band after all.

But half the tracks work so well that you're even inclined to forgive them their titles: the otherwordly easy listening of "Swung from the Gutters"; the electrifying contrast between the busy jazz drumming and the simple, melancholy guitar riff on "TNT"; "I Set My Face to the Hillside", on which slow Oriental plucking gives way to the mournful theme-tune of a Cold War romance, which in turn gives way to a Wild Western motif, before skipping back to Eastern Europe. And, in London's Dingwalls on Thursday, all of these were easily surpassed. Live, if it's not stating the obvious, their music comes to life. While TNT can be as cold and perplexing as yesterday's chilli con carne, in concert, Tortoise are more organic, more urgent, and, best of all, more tuneful.

It can be fantastic to see how it's done, too, just to watch the numerous conflicting rhythms being created without the aid of multi-tracking. The band comprises three college nerds, one balding, burly man and one bona fide jazzer with a goatee, glasses and a tea-cosy hat; and between them they have to man two drum kits, two guitars, a vibraphone and a xylophone that would do Patrick Moore proud, plus bongos, keyboards and bass. All of the band seem to take a turn on each instrument. It's quite something. I even wanted some of the songs to go on longer, and I don't often say that about music with a jazz influence.