Save, perhaps, for Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen – two artists who simply didn’t look right in young bodies – pop musicians don’t generally look forward to growing old. Few are the artists who can repeatedly surprise the waiting world as they did on first acquaintance. You introduce yourself, you say, “Hi, this is what I do”, and then you get on with it.

Mostly, we’re accepting of this fact. With the exception of a trio of early albums made to annoy David Geffen, Neil Young is praised for making one of two albums (the squally one and the acoustic one) again and again. In dance and electronic music, though – genres defined by the shock of the new – we’re less forgiving. Reviews of the Chemical Brothers’ album Push the Button (2005) suggested that the duo’s formula for a successful album – a hat-ful of floor-friendly instrumentals here, a few guest turns from up-and-coming vocalists there, a couple of celeb cameos – was getting a little predictable.

But was the problem them or us? Do you disparage Mars bars on account of the fact that you know what you’ll get for your 45p? If you do, it’s surely not Mars’s fault. It’s probably that you’ve changed.

You can follow a similar argument when listening to certain songs on We are the Night. Take, for instance, the loved-up machine funk of Burst Generatorand the unset-tlingly pacey throb of We are the Night itself. Like most of what Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons commit to record, both tracks will have been anonymously road-tested on several dancefloors, thus ensuring that they work in the habitat that inspired all their fêted early records.

It’s hard to imagine a time when you might really want to play them at home, though. For the main part, the Chemicals fare better when mainlining the creative energy of their collaborators. In The Salmon Dance Fatlip from the Pharcyde delivers a premium slice of dippy West Coast rap over an appealingly magic-eye picture of cheap wobbly synths. You might expect nu-rave’s own Muppet Babies the Klaxons to sound utterly at home over the advancing jackhammer funk of All Rights Reversed, but Willy Mason’s contribution to Battle Scars is revelatory. Prised away from his guitar and thrust into a dystopia of glacial synths, the poster boy for America’s new vanguard of protest singers sounds like The Idiot-era Iggy Pop.

As is their wont, though, Rowlands and Simons save the best until last. Tim Smith from Midlake delivers a lovely comedown lullaby over a foetal, funereal backdrop on The Pills Won’t Help You Now. Is it too much though to hope that the Chemical Brothers might find a way of pleasing all of the people all of the time? Well, actually, no.

Of five variable instrumentals, Das Spiegel– a dewy, digitised six-minute sunrise of muggy melodicas and good vibrations – is up there with their best. But, this shining aberration notwithstanding, the most successful duo in dance music works best as a threesome. If they just invited a few more friends over next time they could give you something to use in your life without compromising the requirements of the dancefloor.

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