Up until now, Hot Chip were more of a singles band than anything else. If it's impossible to not have at least a couple of songs in their past catalogue which you absolutely adored - Boy From School, Playboy, Ready For The Floor... -, it's also true that their full-length albums were loaded with fillers, which made them a bit disappointing as a whole. But that was up until now: with their 4th record, they seem to finally have achieved something that seems complete and makes sense hearing from start to end.
Everything in One Life Stand sounds bigger, while their broad of influences has expanded and the palette of sounds used is much wider. Overwhelming with ideas that translate into an impossible amount of tricks and hooks, they have detailed their sound more than ever, building each and every song into a rich and complex moment that communicates at least a dozen emotions, whether they are built around funky electro rhythms, Daft-Punk-inspired synthlines or ballads that seem to have been born inside a space shift. And then we have what was their best asset in the past, this time multiplied by 100 and splashed in literally everywhere: their ability to attract opposite poles, inserting insanely catchy melodies and choruses in songs that, beneath all the glitter, have a mellow and more nostalgic feeling that should warm even the coldest heart.
More like a soundtrack for travelling the stars than anything else, this is a record where dichotomies like experimentalism vs. accessible pop music stopped making sense a long time ago. Basically their most ambitious album and, hands down, also their best. (7,5/10)
Hot Chip - One Life Stand (video)
hotchip.co.uk
www.myspace.com/hotchip
1 comment:
Agreed! :)
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