MP3 bloggers the world over believe Hot Chip to be pretty much unfuckwitable.The UK dance act have never left the web’s collective unconscious since the release of
The Warning in 2006. They enhanced their rep with energetic live shows, a mix CD for the DJ Kicks series, and remix work for such luminaries as Queens of the Stone Age and Matthew Dear.Yet in the interest of fairness and balance, and because your reviewer is a contrary bastard, I've decided to fuck with them anyway.If you’re new to Hot Chip, and a skeptical sort — as you’ve every right to be, given the hyperbole — you might have one big question to ask after listening to newly-minted third LP,
Made in the Dark. Allow me to answer it for you in advance. That sound of nails scraping across a blackboard? That’s the lead singer’s voice.Despite apparently being named for a soap queen, Alexis Taylor is not a natural performer. His hero is Prince but that tonelessness is more reminiscent of The Purple One’s very short-lived collaborator, Apollonia. At least Apollonia had a bootylicious body for Prince to fall back on in the studio. How’s Taylor getting away with his vocals? By having a fairly intelligent grasp of their limitations, I think. He hams up his charming middle-class English accent, croons lovelorn electro ballads in which his faltering falsetto enhances the mood of fragility, and writes the kind of catchy choruses that we’re too busy barking along to ourselves to notice that he’s only marginally better at singing than one William A. Shatner. Clever, huh?Not every Hot Chip song suits Taylor's voice, however. On album opener "Out at the Pictures," he sounds thin, reedy, and faux-tough next to the wild, clanging big-beat instrumentation. It’s an unintentional and jarring contrast. Likewise, the joyful soundscape of "One Pure Thought" splices Bernard Sumner-ish guitar riffery with bubbling synths, yet Taylor is staccato, emotionless, robotic — and not in a successful Rihanna way. During such moments, it’s easy to see why Hot Chip remixers regularly reduce his vocals to a short sample. One can argue that Taylor has a good enough voice for Hot Chip’s purposes ... but less is definitely more on their potential floor stompers.Yet exactly how many booty shakers are on the album? Early reports mentioned that the young folks probably won’t much like the amount of slow synthy soul on this record. But you know what I say? Fuck the young folks!'Cos here the worm (that is, your slithery reviewer) must turn. Hot Chip can move the body with their beats, the mind with their smarts ... and are now making inroads on the heart. An undeniably hard thing to do in any art form; harder still when the tools you have are mostly synthetic."We’re Looking for a Lot of Love" renders backlashery ludicrous. It’s a beautiful, funereal lament to lost love, complete with a hymnal organ. The lyric from Taylor and Joe Goddard contains the highly poetic musical metaphor, “Every time that we walk the streets/ I try my best to keep up with the beat/ You're everything that I never could keep/ I hear the sound and it starts to repeat.” These boys can write.On the title track, Taylor’s narrator is feeling sensitive, delicate, a little older than he’d like. “Since we fell apart I've been nothing but blue/ Longing for a night-time to bring back my youth," he intones plaintively. Perhaps it’s true that young folks won’t get it ... yet.In" Wrestling," the sport serves as an analogy for a love affair. This might seem lame, especially coming from newly wed Taylor, but the band make it work with a mixture of surprising twists and turns in the music — and the lyrics. Listing one of the wrestling moves as a “Willie Nelson," and then repeating the joke in deadpan fashion, is endearingly amusing.Lead single "Ready for the Floor" was apparently wanted by pop star Kylie Minogue. This would have deprived
Dark of its most danceable song, the "Over and Over" of the album. It’s a veritable Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory of sweet sounds. Darting synths, bouncing bassline, and the politest Oompah Loompah ever: “hoping, by chance, you might take this dance."Album highlight "Don’t Dance" is a genre-defying journey into Hot Chip’s paranoia-filled heart of darkness. It begins with a Super Mario stylee and then marches off in a nu-rave direction, before invoking a particularly dexterous light-sabre clash (is there any other kind?). That’s just the first couple of minutes. Over the top we're asked the heavy rhetorical question, “Is this freedom?” Taylor’s little boy lost chimes in with “love has left/ What is left is an aching fear ... who can see/ Is there an exit here?” The track resolves itself ecstatically into a militant hardcore drumfuck. All you can do is salute. Existential video game space opera acid house electronica has never sounded so good.Hot Chip hit on a winning formula with
The Warning. Wisely they decided not to mess with it. So they’ve once more given us several four-to-the-floor-style dance-floor stompers, a handful of slowies for the oldies, as well as a couple of tries at the more experimental genre that insecurely calls itself Intelligent Dance Music. Simply put, if you enjoyed
The Warning, you’ll enjoy
Made in the Dark.And if you haven’t heard
The Warning ... not to worry, I'll make you a nice cup of cocoa in a minute, granddad.....
Made In The Dark (Astralwerks) - released Feb 5 08Hear tracks:@ "Hype Machine":http://hypem.com/search/hot%20chip/1/@ "MySpace":http://www.myspace.com/hotchip @ the comments - We're Looking For A Lot Of Love and My Piano.
Comments (32)
So I'm what I can describe as a nicest-raisin-of-the-cake-picker... and then I leave the rest for the birds... (unless it's a French cookie!)