“Hot Chip will break your legs/snap off your head/Hot Chip will pull you down/under the ground.”
This was the “warning” Hot Chip made on The Warning, their 2006 breakout album. Despite the threat of violence, fans have eagerly danced along to the band’s unique brand of electronically driven pop-rock anyway. The quintet from London started out as the duo of vocalists Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard, who have known each other since grade school. But Goddard is quick to insist that Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin are essential parts of the band’s sound. Though Hot Chip perform with a chorus of synthesizers, Goddard says the band adds something visceral to the music that differentiates it from what could otherwise be cold and mechanical dance pop. “It’s important for things to feel human,” Goddard says. “Some things are so airbrushed and slick and perfect … we quite like to try to do something more human than that. I like things that have something not right about them, I suppose.”
The group’s fourth album, One Life Stand, was released this year, and though it’s stripped down, it still fully represents the band’s vision. They achieve vulnerability through mechanical means, and that’s no easy feat. In addition to their new material, past hits like “Ready for the Floor” from Made in the Dark and “Over and Over,” “And I was a Boy from School” and “(Just Like We) Breakdown” from The Warning guarantee to get bodies bumping at the band’s live performances.
This was the “warning” Hot Chip made on The Warning, their 2006 breakout album. Despite the threat of violence, fans have eagerly danced along to the band’s unique brand of electronically driven pop-rock anyway. The quintet from London started out as the duo of vocalists Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard, who have known each other since grade school. But Goddard is quick to insist that Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin are essential parts of the band’s sound. Though Hot Chip perform with a chorus of synthesizers, Goddard says the band adds something visceral to the music that differentiates it from what could otherwise be cold and mechanical dance pop. “It’s important for things to feel human,” Goddard says. “Some things are so airbrushed and slick and perfect … we quite like to try to do something more human than that. I like things that have something not right about them, I suppose.”
The group’s fourth album, One Life Stand, was released this year, and though it’s stripped down, it still fully represents the band’s vision. They achieve vulnerability through mechanical means, and that’s no easy feat. In addition to their new material, past hits like “Ready for the Floor” from Made in the Dark and “Over and Over,” “And I was a Boy from School” and “(Just Like We) Breakdown” from The Warning guarantee to get bodies bumping at the band’s live performances.
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