Ever since Hot Chip started as indie kids seemingly dabbling in classic soul and modern R&B, they've been underestimated (not least of which by us). Delivering lines about "20-inch rims" and "Yo La Tengo" in a proper English accent, as they did on their 2005 debut, can have that effect. Yet on their two subsequent records-- 2006's The Warning and 2008's Made in the Dark-- Hot Chip steadily rebuilt their reputation by toughening up their sophistipop side. Their melodies began to develop an itchy, nervous twitch, and they earned dancefloor credibility through an association with DFA.
Best of all, Hot Chip crafted some of the sneakiest and most effective earworms around-- songs that seem deceptively simple and assuming on first listen became year-end list locks by listen number 10. Their quirky detours, winks, and nods were no longer Prince and Stevie Wonder shoutouts; instead, they were subtler, so the band that initially came across as affable goofballs eventually revealed themselves to be the smartest guys in the room. In short, after a half-decade of having our expectations challenged and any hesitations about them erased, it finally felt like we knew who Hot Chip were. But their fourth album, One Life Stand, changes things a bit. After dialing back some of their eccentricities, their latest feels if anything even more likely to be underestimated.
Oddly, this is arguably their best record yet. Whether you'll agree will depend on what you want from Hot Chip and what you want from an album. One Life Stand is their most consistent and most complete record, but it's missing an A-list single on par with "Boy From School", "Over and Over", or "Ready for the Floor". It's also missing dance songs in the mode of the latter two, focusing instead on Hot Chip at their most lush and romantic. Some will claim it's them growing up, but that's not true-- they've always exhibited panache and sophistication. This is simply the first time since their debut that they've primarily honed in on those sensibilities, in the process revealing just how far they've come sonically in the past five years.
It's a bold move but well earned. The band's split personality was in full effect on Made in the Dark, which flitted between heart-on-sleeve songs like "We're Looking for a Lot of Love" and "One Pure Thought" and nebbishy hip-shakers like "Shake a Fist" and "Bendable Poseable". If you wanted a record of the former without the latter, well you're in luck, because that's basically what you have here. As Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal pointed out to me, it's a move akin to the one Pet Shop Boys took circa Behaviour-- a near-shedding of their more overt disco and house influences and an embrace of personal songwriting free of irony or distance.
Because the songs not only share mood and tone but also are generally of the same high quality, One Life Stand has a sense of consistency and completeness missing from their other records, too. At its most basic, One Life Stand is a record of love songs; more specifically, it's often a record of self-actualization and redemption-- of recognizing our need for real human connection. Whether about romance or friendship, the songs on One Life Stand are often about commitment (as the album title indicates) and reciprocal relationships. These qualities aren't typically celebrated in pop culture-- stable monogamy and sensitive male bonding don't have the inherent drama of a star-crossed, fleeting, or unrequited love, after all.
And yet Hot Chip locate the beauty and power in commitment and in stability. Fully two-thirds of the record is built upon proclamations of long-lasting love, which is made clear in many of the record's key lyrics: "You are my love light," "I only wanna be your one life stand," "Please take my heart and keep it close to you," "Happiness is what we all want," "I only want one life together in our arms."
If that seems like a sort of bait and switch, then you've really underestimated Hot Chip, because they've been trading in this sort of sincerity for years. On the one hand, between their inauspicious start, geek-chic dancefloor excursions, and videos, Hot Chip can be viewed as wired, robotic, almost anti-human. Yet Hot Chip have functioned as sort of a mirror image of intelligent, dryly confessional 1980s bands like ABC and the Pet Shop Boys: Whereas lyricists like Martin Fry and Neil Tennant smuggled cynicism into the Top 40, Hot Chip sneak sincerity into an indie electro-pop scene dominated at times by the dress-up of blog-house. Perhaps it's no coincidence then that the best of their peers-- electro-soul brothers-in-arms Junior Boys and big-room dance stars Justice-- are also so straight-faced that people also assumed at first they were each a put-on. And each of the three is far outstripping those chasing fads. (Hey, where's that Uffie record we've been "promised"?)
Weirdly, the songs here most likely to turn people off aren't the odes to everlasting love, but those explicitly about the importance of male connection ("Brothers") or the quest for spiritual guidance ("Slush"). And yet these are the record's twin centerpieces. Neither is as embraceable as singles and potential singles "One Life Stand", "Take It In", "Hand Me Down Your Love", or "I Feel Better", but they're the tracks that elevate the record from a collection of very good songs to a complete picture of an important band near the peak of its powers. Whether Hot Chip now stay in this headspace and sonic range-- perhaps there is a record full of nervy, upbeat and/or more tongue-in-cheek songs á la "The Warning" or "Wrestler" next-- won't obscure the risk they've taken here by fully embracing big-hearted electro-pop. And it won't obscure how successfully they've done it either.
