Use cool dip on Hot Chip

By Nate Adams
Collegian Editor
February 13, 2008

There are a good number of rock critics who seem to feel that rock music has gone as far as it can as a genre. These naysayers appear to believe that there is no new ground that can be tread with guitars, bass and drums. These same folks seem to find salvation for the genre within the context of electronica; add some ambient fuzz to a rock record, and voila, what was stale and old now has a new life on an edgy new amalgamation of genres.

These are the same people who buy Radiohead remix albums and think Thom Yorke’s screechy croons on Amnesiac are the stuff of legend. Take these people with a grain of salt.

Still, there are some bands, like the Dismemberment Plan, for example, that were able to successfully mix rock sensibility with electronic characteristics. After their excellent ’06 release The Warning, I thought Hot Chip might be another such band. While staunchly electronica at heart, Hot Chip has a rock band mentality. Unlike most electronica acts, which are one or two guys in a studio making robot love songs, Hot Chip is made up of five guys who play live shows and make all their noise together, operating as a band.

And while that cohesive element of a band is still present on their most recent release, Made in the Dark, the boys in Hot Chip seem to have traded their devil horns for body paint and strobe lights.

Not that it’s that big a deal. On Made in the Dark, Hot Chip want you to dance, and they spend most of the album making it pretty damn hard to not want to do so. Take, for example, the album opener “Out at the Pictures;” the song starts out with jarring, herky-jerky synth rock before settling into a four-on-the-floor dance anthem that is as catchy as any rock song but as booty-shaking as a European rave DJ.

“Shake a Fist” and “Ready for the Floor” are more of the same, tight dance tracks that still have enough edge that the rockers can dance. It makes for a sound that meshes the hook-centric focus of American techno and the beat heavy catch-and-release of European techno. In less pretentious words, Hot Chip is able to make songs that will not only pound the bass, but get stuck in your head in a good way.

Still, where this album really stumbles is on the softer tracks. Older hits like “The Warning” and “Boy From School” were balancing acts of emotion and movement. Those songs hung like specters, keeping the listener dialed in and sending them through any range of emotions, while at the same time being top-notch dance music. That sort of tense balancing act is missing on Made in the Dark. The closest attempt is “We’re Looking For a Lot of Love,” which sounds like a flat Prince track.

Reminiscent of David Bowie, and late-period Talking Heads if they cared more about dancing than being weirdoes, Hot Chip’s Made in the Dark is a strong record, and a must-have for fans of modern dance music. It is a bit sad to see them moving away from the rock sensibility they touched on in The Warning, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a better record for the dance floor or your headphones.

People looking for Hot Chip to push rock forward will be let down. People looking to dance are in for a treat.

adamsn1@lasalle.edu