Hot Chip - Made in the Dark

On their 2006 breakthrough "The Warning," Hot Chip were nerdy guys standing around the dance floor, nodding their heads to the beat but too shy to jump into the fray. Their new album "Made in the Dark" is "The Warning" after a few shots. The band have dropped their Prince and Beck records and thrown themselves onto the dance floor, substituting fragile beats and poseur affectation for raging bass-lines, pounding drum work and more funky, electro-pop sass than you’ll find on anything else released this year. But what really elevates "Made in the Dark" above the competition is that the record retains enough of Hot Chip’s soft side to give the music a personal touch. Even when the beats are swirling around like a hurricane, there’s a sensitive poise to the record’s execution that’s very much Hot Chip’s own.

Undoubtedly, the strongest cuts on the album are the upbeat ones. Every dance track – with the exception of the slightly irritating “Bendable Poseable” – is a tour de force, from the gushingly upbeat electro-rock of “Hold On” (chorus: “I’m only going to heaven if it tastes like caramel”) to the hilariously playful “Shake a Fist,” whose earth-shaking synth work threatens to send Timbaland packing. Even the first single “Ready for the Floor” – whose sparse, jerky robo-pop initially sounded like a rehash of the band’s ubiquitous 2006 song, “Over and Over” – gets better with every listen, especially when you notice that its hook line isn’t “I am ready for the floor” but “I am ready for a fall.” Oh Hot Chip, you witty guys, you!

The stand out among the dance cuts is the wildly experimental “Don’t Dance,” certainly the most wilfully bizarre song on an album that hardly sticks to formula. Pilfering elements from every notable avant-pop musician of the past twenty years – a day-glo bass-line stolen from Björk here, violent feedback lifted from the Pixies there – and then layering on harmonies so sugary they could have been recorded by the Beach Boys, “Don’t Dance” is the work of a band on top form. And even if it steals its smirkingly ironic title from the Scissor Sisters, its lyric “I’m leaning towards you with my wheezing organ” achieves the song’s aim of snarky post-modern cynicism better than the Sisters ever could.

At the same time, what’s so remarkable about "Made in the Dark" is that, while pitched squarely at the dance floor, it still manages to pack an emotional punch that Justin Timberlake – who I guarantee will be snatching a couple of Hot Chip’s ideas for his next outing – can only balk at. For instead of putting their soft and their funky sides into the same songs as they did on The Warning, Hot Chip have made the right choice on their third outing, putting these opposing traits into different tracks. Though it sounds risky, this choice has definitely paid off. The dance songs are now much easier to dance to, and even if none of the slower tracks are close to touching “And I Was a Boy from School” (for me the song of 2006), they are all pitch-perfect successes, brilliantly matching the raging mock-bravado of the club cuts with a surprisingly tender sensitive side.

The strangely enigmatic “Whistle for Will,” whose ‘trip-folk’ ambience sounds like Nick Drake being covered by Massive Attack, perfectly complements the preceding aggression of “Don’t Dance,” for instance, while the shimmering tear-jerker “We’re Looking for a Lot of Love” casts an aura of warm nostalgia that lasts long after it’s finished.

Though the album’s closing tracks are rather bafflingly sequenced – placing two drowsy, down-beat ballads back-to-back seems like an odd way to end what is essentially a dance record – "Made in the Dark" is a resounding triumph, brilliantly improving on what made "The Warning" such an against-the-odds critical and commercial success. I guess it’s too early to say, but it’s so good that I’m already predicting “album of the year” accolades. Hot Chip, you aren’t ready for a fall – you really are ready for the floor.


"Made in the Dark" released on February 4, 2008 by Astralwerks Records.
Images courtesy of Astralwerks Records and Empire Online.
Published in the Review.