Man, its amazing what some time off dissertation writing does for my music intake. I'm about to get back to it though, so the entries will likely drop right back off.
Anyway, Hot Chip has a remixes album out, I realized I'd never heard this one, despite really liking a few of their previous songs. They've never really put together an album, front to back, that I really got into though, will this be the one?
Hot Chip's music tempts one to coin compound genre descriptions to describe it, lying as it does somewhere in the overlap of electronic music and the indiest indie around. Indie House? Wimptronica? Technemo? But no! Resist! It is, though, for reference, beat heavy, spare music, drowning in small sentiments and big hearts. Well, maybe the "spare" part doesn't apply any more, cause on this album Hot Chip get busy. The mix is stuffed to the gills with synths, guitars, strings, and unidentifiable Radioheadisms and Enosities, sounding a lot dancier in the process.
It's totally agreeable work music, its busy-ness is all in lockstep grooves and perfectly engineered, but it only transcends that when the sentiment finds, exposes, and strikes nerves. Their previous albums had a couple of these nerve-strikers each (Boy from School, The Warning are standouts), and here we see two more in the form of Brothers and Alley Cats, though they don't quite crush as hard as their ancestors.
Across the board, this is likely to be my favorite Hot Chip album - I tend to prefer business to emptiness, and this album is more interesting front to back. That said, no, this is not finally the Hot Chip album that lives up to the promise of its standouts. I think I just happen to really like a very specific kind of Hot Chip song, and that's not the kind of song they tend to make very many of 3/5
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