Paris in the Spring, the title of Alexis Taylor’s latest solo album, isn’t just meant to cue up visions of blooming cherry trees in the Jardin des Plantes, or jambon-beurres enjoyed en plein air. It also references a psychological test: When presented in a certain way, the phrase “Paris in the the spring” is often read aloud by test subjects without the extra “the,” a trick that reveals how brains skip over words they deem unimportant. A single word reveals a profound self-deception—if we missed that “the,” what else are we missing?
Solo projects offer a similar psychological test. When artists in successful groups venture off on their own, their audiences must analyze their work with a new mindset, re-calculating their strengths and weaknesses, the baseline assessment always some form of: “Do they still have the sauce alone?” Alexis Taylor’s main gig is dance band Hot Chip, a group with a 26-year legacy, and by now his solo output has settled into a predictable counterpoint to the group’s work: just as finely crafted, but usually more delicate and less exuberant. Silence, from 2021, was a pensive, subdued exploration of Taylor’s tinnitus diagnosis, and 2016’s Piano, featuring just piano and Taylor’s voice, was about as minimal as you could get.
Now Taylor sounds thrilled to jettison any assumptions about what an Alexis Taylor solo album should be. Paris in the Spring is, as he put in the album announcement, about “freedom—from constraints, from preconceptions, and from genre.” What that looks like in practice is a collection of 10 songs that range from glum balladry to cautiously ecstatic nu-disco, created with a high-class list of collaborators, including Air’s Nicolas Godin (the album was primarily recorded at Godin’s Paris studio) and Étienne de Crécy. In its refusal to adhere to a particular theme or sound, Paris in the Spring comes across as a little diffuse, but when everything locks in, the results are transcendent.
Taylor’s current enthusiasm for abundant, immersive arrangements yields songs that are densely layered but still light, like one of those cakes that’s just a huge tower of crepes. First single “Out of Phase” stacks a lot of busy elements—multipart chorus vocals, playful bass, clattering new-age drums, a sultry guest spot from Lola Kirke—that magically meld into an airy, easy club track. Opening song “Your Only Life” has a McCartney II flair, layering plucky synths and a guitar lick that never ignites, but does smolder quite pleasantly. And, true to Taylor’s claims for the album, the album’s genre blast radius is wide: “Fainting by Numbers” is a New Romantic-style ballad, “mp3s can make you cry” has a country-ish twinkle (and a tasteful touch of vocoder), and there’s an intriguingly wonky electronic cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” tossed in for good measure. Taylor’s voice, as guileless and elegant as ever, ties together what could have been a random-feeling assemblage of tunes in a silky bow.
His music has never been so expansive, and his lyrics never more straightforward. Taylor works through his feelings in real time and present tense, with a clearheadedness that makes his introspection feel uncanny. It’s a fascinating effect: Heartbreak and malaise materialize, but they’re expressed with composure, like prayers answered before they’re even uttered. On “Out of Phase,” he makes references to Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, but even as he describes how adrift he feels—“Help me through this maze/God knows I’m afraid”—the lush music and chill delivery feel serene, rather than Lynchian. When he sings about being a “bad, bad person” on “Fainting by Numbers,” he sounds so virtuous that it’s hard to believe him. Sometimes the language can get a little clunky, like the similes on “Your Only Life” (“Life is hard and then it’s over/Like a broken-down rollercoaster”), or the druggy theme of “Colombia” (“All the cocaine in Colombia couldn’t make you come to me”). He’s at his best when he keeps things plain, like the opening of the piano ballad “For a Toy”: “Why do I keep on fucking up the only thing I have ever loved?”
Taylor sounds natural in just about any genre, but he shines brightest on his home turf: dance music. The album’s best songs are the ones designed to get wallflowers off the wall, and though they may lack that particular Hot Chippian moxie, they more than make up for it in sophistication. “On a Whim,” a collaboration with Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside, is sumptuously funky; “I Can Feel Your Love,” co-produced by the Avalanches, is hypnotic and propulsive, absolutely begging to be played at 3 a.m. at the kind of club that has a no-phones policy. And on “Black Lodge in the Sky,” Taylor stretches way out, singing about chasing “ghosts who have not died” while letting delicate synths wax and wane over a booming bass drum.
Just as the extra “the” in that “Paris in the the Spring” test suggests something hiding in plain sight, so Taylor sneaks in a little something extra at the end of the track: After a moment of silence, the refrain returns in a different register, stripped down to just keys and vocals, as if he was still in the middle of writing it. It serves as a reminder that even the most expansive and collaborative songs must begin with individual inspiration, and are only brought into the world through lonely, repetitive effort. Seven solo albums in, Taylor seems more than happy to keep putting in the work.
