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Jamiroquai seem to be almost fashionable again. Years after we'd written off Jason Kay as that dope-smoking, sports car-driving, funny- hat-loving Stevie Wonder impersonator, he's suddenly winning awards, grinning from magazine covers, and generally being taken a lot more seriously than a man who wears wombats on his head has any right to expect. One reason for this rehabilitation is that he is now one half of a celebrity couple, the other half being Denise Van Outen. Kay's ramblings on the state of the world have earned him almost as much ridicule as his taste in millinery since his first album came out in 1993, so we shouldn't underestimate the if-the- People's-Totty-fancies-him-he-can't-be-that-much-of-a-ponce factor. But even more significant is the sheer number of records Jamiroquai have sold. It's not so easy to dismiss them as an acid-jazz irrelevance now they've shifted 11 million albums.
Their fourth and best LP, Synkronized (Sony), is released tomorrow. To mark the occasion, a UK tour began on Wednesday, staged on a scale befitting Kay's new superstar status. There were video screens, a giant illuminated globe, a whole solar system of mirror balls and a metal climbing frame behind the nine-piece band. Otherwise it was funky business as usual. Kay boogied with an unselfconsciousness that no other male Caucasian can summon unless he is safely in his kitchen; and he wore two different hats (and you don't often hear that said literally). One was of his usual style, ie, a palace guard's bearskin that...