Dorks And Losers

British elec­tronic dance pop sen­sa­tions Hot Chip feels like one of those bands that have been around for what seems like for­ever. Oddly enough, Hot Chip also feels like one of those bands that just seems to get bet­ter with age.

I wish I could say the same thing about myself.

Any­how, Hot Chip puts on a some­what sub­lime show for their fourth album One Life Stand. While the quin­tet usu­ally rocks it hard and fast, their most recent effort has them rock­ing it out still, but instead more casu­ally and gentle.

Babies might still be made with One Life Stand play­ing in the back­ground, but this time the sex­ual encounter would involve less grop­ing, more caress­ing, and a whole lotta love­mak­ing. Yes, it’s hard for me to imag­ine Hot Chip not incit­ing the kind of free love my par­ents prob­a­bly engaged in dur­ing that era every­one in my gen­er­a­tion wishes they exper­i­mented — err, lived — in. I think the band was think­ing the same thing, which might explain the dance track “We Have Love” sand­wiched between the smoother and more R&B-flavored “Alley Cats” and the more abstract “Keep Quiet.”

Another way to think about the album may be in terms of aggres­sive­ness ver­sus pas­sive­ness. Is the band ignit­ing sex­ual urges or is it sim­ply fan­ning the flames of love? At one end, the open­ing up-tempo num­ber “Thieves In The Night” main­tains a steady dance­able beat, but at the other end, the fol­low­ing “Hand Me Down Your Love” reveals a greater sense of urgency to the poten­tial con­quest, as if some­one is leav­ing on a jet­plane and never look­ing back.

Can you feel it? The ten­sion of mak­ing the right choice from a hard deci­sion is fill­ing the air, as well as the void of an empty heart. I’m kid­ding. It shouldn’t be that dif­fi­cult. Even Hot Chip sums up the deci­sion in song with either a short– and long-term answer: “I Feel Bet­ter” or “One Life Stand”. I’ll leave the right path up to the listener.

[pho­tos via Sneak Attack Media]
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Track list:

1. Thieves In The Night
2. Hand Me Down Your Love
3. I Feel Bet­ter
4. One Life Stand
5. Broth­ers
6. Slush
7. Alley Cats
8. We Have Love
9. Keep Quiet
10. Take It In

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