Coming on Strong, the debut album by Hot Chip, feels very far away. In the span of five years, the British five-piece have grown in interesting ways, becoming arguably the premier electronic pop act of the decade. In that time, Alexis Taylor emerged as the wounded soul of the group, and was subsequently at the center of their best moments-- the gentle cooing of "And I Was a Boy From School", the narcoleptic drone of "Over and Over", and the brave glee of "Ready for the Floor". But returning to Coming on Strong reveals a surprisingly even divide between the wispy de facto front man and Joe Goddard, Hot Chip's burly, good-natured percussionist and synth player, with both men playing a sort of down-tempo electro, rippling with tongue-in-cheek lyrics about love and sex and their favorite songs. Goddard sang in his Burl Ives-on-Ambien moan nearly as much as his counterpart, but Taylor's stripped down aesthetic seemed to dominate. Over the years, as Hot Chip's songs have become deeper and more complex and Taylor has stepped out as the face of the group, Goddard's swooping production and fearless programming appears to be winning out sonically. So it was little surprise that Taylor's small-run solo debut last year, Rubbed Out, was a quiet, almost painfully intimate affair. His "Baby" made Lou Barlow sound like a tough guy.
With Harvest Festival, Goddard completes the circle with a rippling set full of throbbing synthesizers and thudding drum machines. He has assembled an accomplished but sterile batch of tracks, some best heard mid-mix at the club rather than in full. Each song title is a goofy play on natural culinary treats (from the straightforward "Strawberry Jam" to the clever "Half-Time Oranges", wisely placed as track number six of 12). Throughout there are flashes of the drama Goddard crafted in Hot Chip's more skittish songs-- the through line from The Warning's "Tchaparian" to Goddard's twitchy, dissonant "Pineapple Chunk" is straight and narrow. Loop is the operative word here. "Pear-Shaped" is dubstep-- good dubstep, really-- through and through. It burrows deep into your body and moves with a fluidity that sounds easy to construct but is deceptively difficult to conjure. Rarely does Goddard flip the mic on and sing, most explicitly on "Lemon & Lime (Home Time)", a throwback to Coming on Strong's quieter moments of self-reflection. "Take me out, I want to see the morning," he burrs-- whether he's emerging from an all-night rave, or an isolated cycle of despair is hard to tell-- Goddard's voice is nothing if not mysteriously monotonous.
In many ways Harvest Festival just feels like a workout; a jaunt for Goddard's recently founded label, Greco-Roman. It's a landing place for kinetic but somewhat unformed songs-- like the pulsating, irresistible, and sort of silly "Go Bananas"-- sloppier, dance-driven ideas that cannot or will not make it to Hot Chip's next album, which Goddard told the NME will be "club tunes but not the really banging ones. We just felt like we wanted to focus on trying to write some really strong pop songs, rather than making hard, aggressive dance floor tracks that have bits of songs bolted onto them." A synthesis of the old Hot Chip and the new seems wise. But it makes Harvest Festival feel like nothing more than a buffer; an appetizer. Ultimately this is smart but unfinished work. Goddard has found a rare thing in Taylor: a match; they make an implacable team. And they needn't stray to be great.
