After a promising debut (Coming on Strong) and a definitive sophomore album (The Warning), Hot Chip found themselves in a position similar to Radioheard's circa Hail to the Thief-- painted into the corner of their own distinct aesthetic on this year's Made in the Dark. This impasse is the ideal moment for band members to make low-key solo albums focusing on the core elements that make their bands great, just as Thom Yorke did with The Eraser.
Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor does just that on Rubbed Out, a refreshingly simple collection of tender ballads and quirky set pieces. It often feels like catching Hot Chip songs half-formed-- it's easy to imagine how they'd shape up with syncopated percussion and filter sweeps, and many of them are so striking that you might wish for similarly stripped-down versions of "Boy From School" and "Look After Me". The sentiment veers between giddy infatuation and discreet heartbreak, but the mood stays quietly devotional throughout. Taylor's voice hovers over rich keyboard smears or bounces lightly over tripping guitars, accented with little bells and whistles.
The hooks come hard and fast over Rubbed Out's delightful first two-thirds. "Fireworks", an engaging squelch-and-static instrumental, serves as a quick warm-up for "Plastic Man", a winsome organ hymn on which Taylor sings unabashedly about "the heart that is inside of me." A fluttering electric guitar version of Paul McCartney's "Coming Up" follows, and by the time you get to the hopscotch-pop of "Baby", you'll be charmed. Other front-end highlights include silky ballads "I Thought This Was Ours" and "What Good Is Love?", while "I'm Not a Robber", with its skittering drums and keyboard sheen, is the closest thing here to a Hot Chip song.
This 15-track album starts to taper off around "Musical Food", one of a couple of pointless drone pieces that pad Rubbed Out's confused final third. I'm all for drone pieces in general, but Taylor's knack is for razor-sharp pop, not murky ambiance, and his talents feel especially wasted here. We also get brief sketches that might've been cool had they been finished (although one, "I'm Juan", features some unusually ugly synth sounds), and a closing work-out for booming drums. These pieces feel tacked-on, which their sequencing as the last six tracks supports.
The parallels between Taylor's Rubbed Out and Yorke's The Eraser go beyond big-band auteurs making intimate solo albums. Consider their titular references to deletion-- of bandmates, of ornate arrangements, of instrumentation, and most importantly, of pressure. Taylor and Yorke seem to have had the same idea-- as their bands threatened to become moribund, they needed to get back to basics. For Radiohead, this re-centering was the pivot between Hail to the Thief and the revivified In Rainbows; hopefully the parallels will continue and Rubbed Out will have the same effect on Taylor's next album with Hot Chip.
