James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
On their last trip out, 2008’s Made in the Dark, eclectic electro five-piece Hot Chip shifted hastily between frenetic pop (‘Shake a Fist’) and mellow balladry (the title track). Despite both ends of that spectrum showing signs of converging towards a steadier mid-tempo feel on their latest album, One Life Stand is, like any of their work, idiosyncratic to the point that no other band could have made it.
As usual for Hot Chip, musical ideas that might first seem ramshackle or lightweight (take the keyboard-mashing synth sample on ‘I Feel Better’ or Alexis Taylor’s weary vocal loop on ‘Slush’) quickly embed themselves within clever structures. Often, eccentric fragments of vocals, guitars and steel drums beckon for the dance floor, as on likeliest hit single ‘One Life Stand’, but the album's outstanding track comes in the form of a ballad. ‘Alley Cats’ sees three and a half minutes of subtle multi-layered build up result in the most perfect and refined minute of the band’s career, in which three vocal lines play off each other in an affecting ebb and flow.
The settling of the music comes hand in hand with the lyrics, which call at numerous occasions for romantic constancy; the opener proclaims that “happiness is what we want”, the closer that “my heart has flown to you just like a dove”. However much the music and lyrics might ooze contentment, though, One Life Stand proves far more soulful than stagnant.
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