Chromeo's Dave 1 keeps his cool, even in the middle of a domestic scrap. "Let's keep the screaming and the fighting and the crying to a minimum," he says on "My Girl is Calling Me (A Liar)", "and if the kitchen don't work we can fight in the living room," biting off that last syllable sharply enough to force the rhyme. Before the household battles, presumably, comes the pick-up, and he's good at that too: "Let me tell you that I saw your boyfriend, walking down the street," goes "Bonafied Lovin' (Tough Guys)". "He was standing all shaky, hands all sweaty, and he could hardly speak/ I might as well take a minute or two to put you on to some game: You got a boy like him, a man like me, and that's just not the same."
Best friends Dave 1 (aka David Macklovitch, A-Trak's older brother) and P-Thugg, who give one another common sense advice as part of their tracks, don't self-edit much. "Just take her to movies and you're bound to work it out," interjects P-Thugg, via telephone, on "My Girl Is Calling Me". The band's self-consciously limited palette-- an electrofunk-by-numbers mélange of talk boxes, 808s, canned percussion, and Prince-style atmospherics-- is just another manifestation of their inability to tell a lie. If a song's called "Fancy Footwork", it's going to be about fancy footwork.
Cocksmen they may be, but it's a thing they've got to talk themselves into. Faux-ballad "Momma's Boy" is a mashed-out keyboard confessional about a romance between a girl in love with her dad and a boy equally in love with his mom. A novelty song with a happy ending, the two of them figure something out: The girl looks like his mom, and he looks like her dad, so they're all set. On the 1980s throwback "Opening Up (Ce Soir On Danse)", Macklovitch is in the middle of baring his soul to a new girlfriend when he loses her number. He's got to ask her, "Tell me what numbers to dial, 'cause I've been strung out for a while."
Going over the top here is just part of the package. The skin flick sax on "100%", the ripping, non sequitur guitar solo on "Momma's Boy", the straight "1999"-rip that is "Outta Sight": These are the consequences of getting in the mood. Better that than the cynical grab at pop star detachment that is "Tenderoni", Fancy Footwork's first single and far and away worst song. Built around a bad bit of slang that fell out of favor years ago, Macklovitch utters platitudes like "You and I/ Baby we go side by side" before rapping about getting in those pants over some slap bass. All you need to save songs like these is to not blink in the face of the irony, the shtick, whatever-- just don't break the frame, right?
More lovable is their "Intro", where over some tinnily epic synths the two Chromeos get a girl to chant their name, over and over, the three syllables ascending like stadium entrance music. This is surely what they come out to when they play live. And though it may hype a crowd it's obvious it's there for them too. Nerdy guys in sunglasses, they've got to convince themselves of their cool before they go to work on us.
