Thursday, February 11, 2010

Hot Chip is a band with a great record collection. They craft a sound that brings together Kraftwerk and more obscure electronica and puts it together with distinctly indie song craft. What’s not to like?

The new album, One Life Stand is full of their trademark ramshackle rhythms, this time overlaid with ravey nineties piano chords. Had they been around in 1989, they’d have been darlings of the Hacienda.

Early on, it threatens to be a big old party, and yet, the whimsy in singer Alexis Taylor’s voice never quite allows them to peak before they drift some mid-album melancholy. This is all very lovely; you can’t get bored of Hot Chip when they’re just being Hot Chip like this.

Building to the album’s close, the band turn into early-Depeche Mode, as if to illustrate this, when it finishes The Mode’s Some Great Reward comes on the stereo and the music barely misses a step. All of which means that Hot Chip have created really nice album that doesn’t quite take them away from their charming left field quirkiness.

You suspect that everything Hot Chip need to become massive is hidden inside their retro Krautrock t-shirts. Depeche Mode were driven by good old-fashioned 80’s greed, New Order by financial profligacy. These factors turned them into global superstars. I suspect Hot Chip would feel this would be an affront to everything they stand for.