 "Photo: Stephon McLeod")
Hot Chip’s new album begins and ends with a heartbeat. The beat accelerates for some songs and slows down for others, but it is always the most vital part of the music. The beat breathes life into the whole album.
One Life Stand is very much a heartfelt creation. The album is composed mostly of love songs, in some cases, instantaneously danceable love songs. With any luck, Alexis Taylor’s gentle voice could make dancing romantic again.
One Life Stand is the fourth release by London’s synth-pop daredevil, the next evolutionary step in the complex soundscapes they have been composing for most of the last decade; however, this album is miles away from the minimalist grooves that characterized their first album.
Hot Chip hasn’t lost its sense of creativity, however. In fact, it seems like they’re willing to try any style or sound that will convey their imaginations fully.
Although One Life Stand continues to display the band’s fondness for retro, it comes off more Ace of Base than New Order.
Songs like “We Have Love” and “I Feel Better” are almost tongue-in-cheek throwbacks to ’90s dance culture, Night at the Roxbury style.
“Thieves in the Night,” the album’s opening track, begins like the first song from the band’s last three albums: soft, synthesized wind that floats across the listener’s ear to mark the coming storm of electronica. But the rest of One Life Stand progresses in a stream of consciousness.
The lyrics are arranged as one brief musing after another. The writing is poetic, so the ideas advance almost illogically. And yet, they always return to the same themes of love, happiness and how fragile these feelings can make people.
The song “Brothers,” however, takes the notion of love in a different direction. It serves as a musical ode to bromance that highlights the joys of playing video games and looking after drunk loved ones.
The next two tracks, “Slush” and “Alley Cats,” flicker with memories of Hot Chip’s past. “Slush” is a dreary ballad that re-imagines the loneliness of Made in the Dark’s title track, while “Alley Cats” goes even further back, channeling the layered production and low fidelity of Coming on Strong.
Perhaps, Hot Chip aims to set the tone for dance, electronic and pop music for the new decade. The album comes off as artful and meticulous, yet always fun. This is a band who make for a good show, (at least as entertaining as a Girl Talk concert), but with room to dance. It is almost a shame that Hot Chip has yet to find an American audience that bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs achieved in the same amount of time. But with a fourth solid release on top of their impressive library, it looks as if Hot Chip still has the dedication and energy to keep feet moving for years to come.
Go to www. loyolaphoenix.com to listen to this week’s streams.
2 comments