Hot Chip – One Life Stand

Hot Chip - One Life Stand

So here we are, one of 2010’s most anticipated releases…but can Putney’s favourite geeky dance-pop musos deliver the classic (and possibly career defining) album many are expecting?

Things get off to a strong start with opener ‘Thieves In The Night’.  It’s all broody synth organ drones and a four-on-the-floor kick drum, which builds anticipation and excitement, as any album opener worth it’s salt should. Alexis Taylor’s instantly recognisable falsetto finally gets things going: “My friend once told me something so right, he said to be careful of thieves in the night.”

From here on, the track seems to be on an ever-upward pursuit for bliss and abandon, with layers of synths, beats and guitars being added on top of one another in a clever marriage of words and music, “happiness is what we all want.”  Lovely stuff.

Next up is the piano led demi-ballad, ‘Hand Me Down Your Love’, which stands out as one of the record’s more instant tunes.  In what seems like an attempt to remain “human” and “honest”, the band have opted for a distinctly acoustic drum kit sound in the intro and verses.  It’s not what you’d expect from a Hot Chip song, but then again surprising listener’s is one of the things they do best.

Pretty string lines and delicious rising melodies ensure that it won’t be long before Erol Alkan decides he wants to sinks his dirty electro teeth into this one, as there is a filthy floor filling monster hiding just below the surface.

* “Don’t give a shit about the cool kids”

It’s no surprise that the album takes its name from the first single to be released from the album. ‘One Life Stand’ is an instant Hot Chip classic.  It’s irreverent, completely mad and is filled with a seemingly bottomless pit of hooks.

The choreography on the video sums up Hot Chips’ “don’t give a shit about the cool kids” approach to their music and image, which has garnered the band such a devoted fan base.  What’s a shame is that this sense of fun doesn’t appear elsewhere on the album. A few more tracks like this, rather than the insipid ‘Slush’ or ‘Brothers’ and One Life Stand would be the first must have of the decade, rather than just the very decent album that it is.

Other highlights include ‘Alley Cats’ and ‘We Have Love’.  The first is more of an entity than a song and is quite simply one of the loveliest, most understated, tracks Hot Chip have written to date.  It drifts in and out of focus like a sunshine drenched winter weekend morning and contains one of the album’s rare moments of Alexis Taylor’s and Joe Goddard’s beautifully idealised duel vocals.

‘We Have Love’ will certainly be featuring in several DJ’s set lists in 2010. It’s subtle dance hall and dub step ingredients are fused seamlessly with Hot Chip’s uncanny ability to produce dark, obscure mantras, which demand to be played time and time again.

* “How come they don’t just play like that cool part through the whole song?”

Taylor and Goddard have clearly decided to save one of the biggest choruses they band have ever summoned for the album’s closer ‘Take It In’. The song employs a familiar song-writing trick of minor key verses and major key choruses, which reminded me of a scene from Beavis and Butthead where they discuss Radiohead’s ‘Creep’:

Beavis: “What’s going on? How come they don’t just play like that cool part through the whole song?”

Butthead: “Well Beavis, if they didn’t have like a part of the song that sucked, then it’s like, the other part wouldn’t be as cool.”

To say that about ‘Take It In’ is a little harsh, but you get the idea. The minimally melodic verses become more attractive with repeated listening and act as a perfect counterweight to the gorgeous falsetto chorus: “My heart has flown to you just like a dove, it can fly, it can fly.  Please take my heart and keep it close to you, take it in, take it in.”

The album still has room for Amnesiac era Radiohead in the minimalist electronica of ‘Keep Quiet’ and an attempt at a 90s dance pop revival in ‘I Feel Better’.  I used to live next door to a halfway house for young offenders and elements of this track certainly come from the same ‘Dance Anthems’ stock, which used to haunt me during the delinquents’ all-too-frequent all nighters. That said, ‘I Feel Better’ isn’t unpleasant, but as with a few moments on the album I can’t help but feel that it doesn’t quite reach it’s potential.

So back to the key question, is the album any good?  It’s certainly a strong addition to the Hot Chip oeuvre and a must for any fan however, I would still recommend 2006’s The Warning to any newcomers.  Key tracks ‘One Life Stand’, ‘Hand Me Down Your Love’, ‘Alley Cats’ and ‘Take It In’ are undoubtedly great Hot Chip songs, but they don’t quite reach the dizzying heights of ‘Over And Over’, ‘Boy From School’ or ‘Ready For The Floor’.

Perhaps Hot Chip are just too eclectic and experimental a band to write an album that will be widely regarded as a classic.  It’s unlikely they will ever write a record that will be universally viewed as a cohesive ‘whole’.  But perhaps that’s not the point. Their inventive and often risky approach to song writing means that not every attempt works as well as it might, but this is precisely why they are admired as one of the most unique bands of the past decade.

So anyway, dance your nuts off to ‘One Life Stand’, find your heart swept away by ‘Alley Cats’ and ‘Take It In’, play ‘spot the steel drum Leitmotif’ that runs throughout and prepare yourself for the brilliant remixes to follow.  This might not be a ‘classic’, but don’t be too surprised if it ends up on a few top ten lists at the end of the year, after all how many bands are capable of sounding completely out of place and in perfect harmony with their surroundings at the same time?

The Fiery Furnaces – Take Me Around Again

Fiery Furnaces - Take Me Round Again

Heard it all before? It all sounds the same is a common complaint, and one often thrown at folk-tinged garage bands. The Fiery Furnaces do at least try to do things a bit differently – from the throb of electronic beats they sometimes sneak into their output to the bizarre cut and paste approach taken to last year’s live album Remember, which had about three years’ worth of gig recordings spliced together into an odd aural patchwork. But there is a reason their latest effort seems familiar. … Continue Reading

Mike Doughty – London Relentless Garage

Mike Doughty

February 2nd 2010

“I want to be on you”.  Ron Burgundy’s “immortal words” are those chosen by Mike Doughty to sell himself to the British public.

Doughty, formerly of alt-rock band Soul Coughing, is pretty popular in the States, but relatively unknown here.  My question referred to selling himself to us in the style of a dating ad.  His witty answer, I come to realise, is standard.

The American singer-songwriter is a fairly open book, regularly tweeting (find him @mikedoughtyyeah) and blogging on his website, where he comments honestly on his day to day activities and thoughts on the happenings in the world; two recent tweets include “Lousy night. Crowd couldn’t have cared less” and “Salinger gone – perhaps we’ll at last hear his Rock Opera”.  Is it important for him to keep in touch with fans? “I think it ends up being important, but the reason I do it is just my general obsession with killing time online” he says. “I think my crowd feels pretty close to me because of the access I give to myself, but I don’t think it’s necessarily vital to being a musician these days”.

This openness has extended to a book about his previous life as a drug addict, which he’s in the process of writing.  Mike claims “writing prose is a lot more time consuming than song writing” and that “linear thinking”  is not his strength.  He’s currently struggling to write about his time with Soul Coughing, describing it as “pretty shitty”.
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Chemikal Underground’s Celtic Connections – Glasgow ABC

Chemikal Underground

If you’re looking to name a contemporary independent Scottish label, there’s a chance Chemikal Underground will be the first. Originally set up by The Delgados to release their debut single, they quickly established themselves as the most important label in Scotland since Postcard releasing records by the likes of Arab Strap, Mogwai, Aereogramme, Bis, Mother & The Addicts and even Interpol (albeit only one record by them). Tonight’s gig, as part of Glasgow’s annual Celtic Connections festival is a celebration of Chemikal’s fifteenth birthday, with a selection of the labels current offerings on stage to help, and Vic Galloway hosting in between.

Travelling from ‘the other place’ to Glasgow, this writer only gets the middle of the evening’s entertainment, four bands who certainly maintain the label’s image of having an eclectic but cohesive roster. Zoey van Goey, are an indiepop five piece whose overall ‘sound’ is difficult to pin down, but they’re entertaining if nothing else. There’s something of a less-twee Belle & Sebastian about them, but perhaps if B&S had been weaned on post-rock, as well as Felt.

Next is the debut performance from The Unwinding Hours, formed from the ashes of Aereogramme (disbanded in 2007). They instantly create an atmosphere, beginning with sparse guitars before getting louder and more epic, slightly reminiscent of The Twilight Sad, if a little less dour. The highlight of their set has to be during their last song, ‘The Final Hour’, when the it changes from sparse instrumentation to an ear-splitting, trouser-flapping din, forcing numerous members of the audience out of their skin. Unfortunately some of the material verges a little bit on the MOR side of things, but with moments like that up their sleeve, it’s certainly worth giving them a chance.

Lord Cut-Glass are label founder and former Delgado Alun Woodward’s new project, making literate pop music, which certainly has echoes of his former band, if augmented with Scottish and gypsy folk influences, and even ska rhythms at one point.

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The Ex + Brass Unbound + Zun Zun Egui – Bristol Fleece

The Ex

January 29th 2010

There’s a keenly felt sense of anticipation in the Fleece this evening. As well as being the first of The Ex’s performances with the formidable Brass Unbound roster – Mats Gustafsson, Ken Vandermark, Roy Paci and Walter Wierbos – the bill also features local firebrands Zun Zun Egui, a band that sorely deserve the increase in status this tour should hopefully bring. 

On paper, Zun Zun Egui are impossible to define. Try to explain their sound to a prospective listener and the sentence almost inevitably becomes tangled between brain and mouth. This evening their impact is dented a little by slightly muddy sound, at least from where I’m stood, but it does little to diminish their furious energy. Zun Zun’s frequent brilliance is hard to pin down, but partly lies in the tension between frontman Kushal’s glottal yelps and keyboardist Yoshino’s sweet, breathy vocals. Their interplay provides a consistency that allows the band space to snap seamlessly between spazzy blasts of guitar and four-to-the-floor tropical funk. Without that anchor – and indeed, without their drummer’s impressive chops – their music would run the risk of heading off in a hundred different directions all at once. Perhaps that’s a part of the appeal.

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She Keeps Bees – London Black Heart

She Keeps Bees

Wandering the dark backstreets of Camden is not something I’d normally recommend to anyone but it is the only way you’ll find tonight’s venue. The Black Heart has proved itself to be a hidden gem of Camden Town by simply walking around the corner to find a giant black heart swinging from the wall. It’s the black cherry on the cake that stripped down ranchy blues rock duo She Keeps Bees are joining us tonight courtesy of The Allotment.

The Allotment are treating us to a three-strong line-up of female fronted rock bands this evening. Both Lulu & The Lampshades and surprise guests Peggy Sue & The Pirates smash out sterling sets; filling the room with personality and showing off quirks such as playing a typewriter with drumsticks which is only emphasized by the excellent village fete atmosphere provided by the organizers.

She Keeps Bees are nothing short of their reputation as thumping southern styled blues when they get going with their first song ‘Release’ from one of my album highlights of last year, Nests. There is something about She Keeps Bees which keeps at least one foot tapping . Jessica’s vocals tonight add to Andy’s thump and make them something slow enough to be sultry and gritty enough to be ranchy. The anthemic ‘Gimme’ engulfs this intimate venue with their raw garage groove and heads are nodding involuntarily. They show a slightly more country side to the pair with ‘Wear Red’ a loosely strung song with a belting vocal hook that still has it’s foot firming in the proverbial blues door.

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Archie Bronson Outfit, London Lexington

January 27, 2010

After a wait of almost four years since the release of their last album, Derdang Derdang, it’s good to be able to report that the Archie Bronson Outfit haven’t subjected themselves to the whimsies of stylists in the fields of either music or fashion while putting together their new LP. The beards are still there, they still shun the need for roadies by doing their own pre-set tuning, and while they may have recruited a synth-player, rest assured they haven’t gone all ’80s on us.
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Laura Veirs – July Flame

Laura Veirs

And so winter brings another album written around the turn of seasons, as everybody’s-favourite-artist-ever-to-use-‘spelunking’-in-a-song, Laura Veirs, releases her seventh album in the new year on Bella Union (and her own label, Raven Marching Band Records in the States).

“Drenched in wood-smoke and sunlight”, July Flame is produced by boyf Tucker Martine of Crane Wife/Hazards Of Love fame, and whilst much has been made of the progression from major label to self-release and the stripped back minimalism of the new music, the main strength of the album is not fewer instruments, but that the sound is less cluttered, more delicate. Although she has described this album as “sparse”, and “music that hits you in the gut”, this does her an injustice. Visceral as the songs are, there is certainly a lot of the cerebral about both the lyrics and arrangement. Rarely does Veirs write choruses, preferring instead to rely on the ebb and flow of an abstract lyric on the top of finger-picking and a repeated refrain. She has in the past reiterated the mantra of the pop songwriter, that her lyrics are open enough to appeal to everyone on a different level, but this seems to be slightly misguided, as Veirs’ songs are far from generic, and one could question the mass appeal of re-working Rimbaud poems in folk form. But this is what sets her apart – her oddity, her uniqueness.

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The Mary Onettes – Islands

The Mary Onettes

The Mary Onettes have made my job easy; I could do away with mentioning how their name reminds me of Earthbound (that SNES game from the 90’s) and just cut the whole review down to one sentence: Do you like The Cure? Yes? Then you’ll probably like The Mary Onettes.

Annoyingly that ‘probably’ means I have to elaborate and actually write a proper review, damn. Hailing from Sweden, The Mary Onettes are essentially an 80’s inspired pop band, taking their cues from gloomy acts such as Echo and The Bunnymen, and of course, The Cure.

However, where The Cure were known to produce the occasional upbeat tune, such as ‘Lovecats’ and ‘Friday I’m In Love’, this band maintain a steady level of mediocre melancholy in their sound, making them great for sad funeral moments in low budget films and sitting rocking gently in the dark, but not good for much else.

While Islands is without doubt a well performed and polished album, it just lacks energy, with each track agonisingly dragging into the next, like the horror that was the Freddie Krueger TV series (although The Mary Onettes could probably benefit from the excitement of having razor sharp fingers).

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Owen Pallett, London Union Chapel

January 26, 2010

After seeing him under his former alias Final Fantasy at the very same venue in the summer of 2009, hopes are riding high in the sky for this show. In that night back yonder in May 2009, he shot from an artist I was distantly fascinated by to an untouchable beacon of everything that live music should provide. Skip forward forward a few months and it’s little wonder that I’m left evermore aghast at the purpose of my existence on exiting the Victorian Gothic Union Chapel’s doors… … Continue Reading