Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor at the O2 Academy, Bristol. Chapman/Livepix
If Hot Chip are an astonishing tender that on paper shouldn"t work, afterwards live theirs should be an even harder pretence to lift off. Many bands have one piece of who looks somewhat out of place on stage, but with this garland the total rope can crop up incongruous. Even in the universe of dance music, a genre not just eminent for sex symbols, these are doubtful lads.
On and off stage, they presumably tire a small of carrying the geek tag so straightforwardly trustworthy to them – "It seems to be formidable for people to learn that people can have dance song but not see similar to Judge Jules or the Prodigy," pronounced co-founder Joe Goddard not long ago – but when four-fifths of the rope are Oxbridge graduates and their coming is majority appropriate described as post-acid residence charity-shop chic, there"s a sure inevitability. However, this is not an artfully assembled geek-chic image. Hot Chip additionally suffer a refreshingly witty clarity of humour, and it is this that separates them from those alternative dance song protagonists who outlay majority of their time worrying about losing their edge.
What they should be improved gratified about is the actuality that people find it majority harder to tag or categorize their music. They initial appeared as a post-electro strife Fisher Price-version of Kraftwerk, coining the word "r"n"bedroom" themselves to report their sound. But over the past 6 years, and 4 college of song albums, they"ve suggested increasingly charming ambitions, blending and theft from the last 35 years of dance music, from disco to dubstep, around post-punk, electro, hip hop, poison house, techno, balearic, drum"n"bass, big kick and UK garage.
After a somewhat sketchy third album, this month"s One Life Stand noted a big lapse to form, display a some-more soulful side to their electro-pop and an ever augmenting range of influences from Willie Nelson to, inexplicably, Susan Boyle.
I initial saw them live five years ago in the small and rickety but delightfully declared Church of the Friendly Ghost, in Austin, Texas, at that year"s South by South West festival. Back then, they achieved in a true line along the front of the stage, at the back of a bank of keyboards. Tonight they face inwards towards each other, surrounded by keyboards and all from a cowbell to steel pan. They don"t have a normal frontman, but Alexis Taylor, a extraordinary brew of one piece Mike Skinner, one piece Jimmy Somerville and dual tools Brains from Thunderbirds, performs majority outspoken duties, nonetheless he stays at the back of his set of keys for the majority part, that does outcome in a miss of a focal point.
This counts less than it might, as the rope has grown in status and certainty since those early shows, and they are right away a majority some-more discriminating outfit. It"s easy to suppose their iPods featuring the full criterion of cool – New Order, Can, LCD Soundsystem, Soft Cell, Prince, Mr Fingers, ESG, Chemical Brothers, Sylvester, Giorgio Moroder, Pink Floyd, 808 State, Talking Heads and A Certain Ratio – but also, unapologetically, the likes of Abba, Visage, Yes, 10cc, Vangelis and Fleetwood Mac.
This evening, after stomping opener "Boy from School", they segue true in to the piano-and-percussion-driven "Hand Me Down Your Love", blending their dancefloor sensibilities with cocktail hooks and choruses. The petite Taylor has blossomed in to the majority appropriate passionless vocalist in dance song since Neil Tennant, and his light falsetto contrasts easily with the dry subsidy vocals of Goddard.
We get majority of the new album, with a trace of comparison favourites, and they"re assured sufficient to fool around their majority appropriate dual songs, "One Life Stand" and "Over and Over", together mid-set. Both are somewhat beefed-up versions live, "Over and Over" in sold since a harder dancefloor corner and an lengthened intro. At alternative points, as with "Brothers", their paper to fastening on tour, there are unmistakables touches of synth prog.
They don"t fool around "No Fit State" tonight, that they have on progressing dates, and I after find out that this is since the bad lads were on the verge of being in no fit state themselves, with half the rope pang from gastric flu. This they censor flattering well, with Goddard, in particular, increasingly charcterised as the dusk goes on. They finish with the irresistible, acrobatics off-kilter electro cocktail of "Ready for the Floor", those on-the-floor arms are lifted as one. "I am ready, I am ready for a fall," intones Taylor. On this form it seems unlikely, even with a stomach bug.
