Hot Chip

A year or two ago, a friend turned me on to Hot Chip. He touted them as a sick club band, and the conversation leading up to him recommending the band to me had me quite interested. Their album Made in the Dark was the first, and most recent of theirs, that I picked up and I loved half of it. They were a serious band disguising themselves in the world of club music. Songs like Ready For a Fall are so catchy and sweet; a lonely love song pretending to be about checking a girl, or in this case a guy, at a dance.

Instead of carving up the wall
Why don't you open up, we talk?
I am ready for a fall



The rest of the album was mostly forgettable party fare, just silly catchy electronica that doesn't hold up. But in between songs of no substance, they put in other tracks like We Are Looking for a Lot of Love. Just gorgeous stuff here, lush and melodic. This is a film someone threw together with it as the soundtrack.


Thankfully, their last release, One Life Stand, followed in the steps I was hoping it would. They really distinguished their strengths and built into a dance friendly outfit with nice full electronic sound. The production is wonderful, and channeled into songs about relationships and love, instead of talking about trivial ideas that did not fit their arrangement and composition capabilities.

I will be brief on my descriptions here:

Hand Me Down Your Love is track two, and has some really great vocals.
Alley Cats, a song in the 2/3 of the album, is probably my favorite. Great warm synths and strings, and again very strong vocals. They are much less forgettable than most of Made in the Dark.
One Life Stand is a single much like Ready For the Floor. It has strong, dark pop elements with some interesting synth work.