Jamiroquai are huge stars in England, but they've had a hard time translating their success over here.

Maybe that's because their brand of anglicized American funk sounds a little fresher there.

Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that they haven't released a new album in four years, or played a show on this side of the Atlantic since 1998.

"There's a reason for that," Jamiroquai main man Jay Kay explained over the phone from New York yesterday.

"The last album was released on Sept. 11, 2001. We were here in New York, and we had a flight to L.A. at 11 that morning to do the Jay Leno show. We never got there -- we were here for a week, and eventually got home and sat looking into space and bursting into tears. We were a bit shy about flying for a while."

Apparently, Kay also had to take the time to break a cocaine habit.

"I needed to kick cocaine in the teeth, which I managed to do," he said proudly.

"I've been clean a year and 10 months. I didn't go to rehab; I basically paid a friend of mine to stand next to me for 24 hours a day 'til I could be trusted to go out and enjoy myself without being tempted.

"It's not easy in this business. If you're not the life of the party, no one's interested. It's part of your job, in a sense, to be out there, and if you can't go out without staying awake 'til noon, it's no good. It was a clear choice: Did I want to continue my career, or do cocaine? It was scary -- I wondered whether I was going to lose my edge. I gave it up the day after my birthday, January 1, 2004, and that's when we started the album."

Dynamite is Jamiroquai's sixth album, and the first without longtime keyboardist and songwriter Toby Smith, who left in 2002.

Kay found a replacement in Matt Johnson and used the opportunity to open up the band's whole process.

"I wanted to make sure people couldn't say it sounded like my last record," he said.

"It's difficult when you have a style -- I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I wanted to give it a sound that made it more accessible to North American audiences, 'cause I'd been fairly unsuccessful at that.

"We recorded in Costa Rica for a month, then we went to Majorca and Italy and Scotland, where we wrote Starchild in my little crofter's cottage in the snow. And I wanted to see what American players and arrangers and vocalists could do and how different their approach was, so we did a month in New York and a month in L.A."

The result balances Jamiroquai's trademark funky-hippie sound with a lot of frankly lustful lyrics.

"I wanted to concentrate more on groove, on having fun," Kay said.

"I wanted to make a sexy record. Dynamite is what I call my sexy mid-30s song. I did what came to me, and I'm in that stage."

According to Kay, the band is happy to have the chance to win over North American audiences as if for the first time.

"We're back to square one," he said cheerfully.

"We've been doing gigs for 45,000 in Europe and now we're playing to 2,000. But I'm enjoying it. And it's been such a long time that we almost forgot how good North American audiences are. I have fond memories of playing in Toronto and

everybody going wild. And I've just gone out and bought myself a goose down jacket, so I won't freeze my ass off like I did last time!"

Jamiroquai play the Kool Haus Friday.