Hot Chip - Made in the Dark
Immediately following the spoken advice helpfully given midway through the second song on Hot Chip's third studio album, "Shake a Fist", to get out and crank up your headphones, Hot Chip delivers one of the more engrossing synth breakdowns in recent memory. Bouncing and stumbling through a glitch-filled beat, it helps to showcase the top notch musicality of these five Brits (as well as their superb ear for production). The opening vocal repetition of the next track demonstrate that they know how to have fun, and the perky beat testifies to that. Elsewhere, the almost stream of consciousness ramblings of "Hold On" ("I'm only going to Heaven/If it tastes like caramel") and references to Willie Nelson and WWE in the same song ("Wrestlers") show their tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.
Really, the strongest and weakest moments on the album come from the ballads. The standout title track strips away the effects in favor of soul-influenced guitar lines while Alexis Taylor sings gently about broken love. On the other hand, the final two tracks bring the tempo down, but fail to pay off in any significant way. These aren't bad songs, but on this record they seem almost irrelevant, a way to lull you to sleep so you won't notice the music is ending. Still, these are minor quibbles, and for the most part, the album shines with an infectious groove, a beat you can dance to, and lyrics that carry a both a sense of humor and an emotional weight worth paying attention to. Crank up your headphones.
7.5/10
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