How I Like Hot Chip: The Playlist

If my kid wasn’t already a Hot Chip fan, I’d tell him that the “One Life Stand” video was footage of one of my band practices twenty some years ago. After all, it's a handful of goofy dudes nodding their heads and playing instruments in a tight space, occasionally taking a breather for synchronized dancing and other dorky hijinks. I’ve never seen a video better convey the joy of nerds playing with tech and trying to approximate something like pop (names of bands I was in for one or fewer shows: The Whole Nine, Harlem Heat, The Kustom Karnal). It's as if Radiohead never dreamed of being U2, loving DJ nights and R&B crate digs right from the get-go. As they put it on “Night & Day,” Hot Chip are the kind of educated vinyl junkies who “like Zapp, not Zappa.”

Unlike Radiohead, the five members of Hot Chip didn’t come together at the same school, pounding away at their sound in a rehearsal room. Leaders Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard did meet in the 90s at Elliott School in Putney, sharing musical discoveries from the Beasties to house music to Bill Callahan before creating bedroom synth-soul like a cross between Hall & Oates and the “White Lines” scene in Shaun Of The Dead. And though multi-instrumentalists Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin were among pals who contributed to the early EPs, they didn’t officially join until Coming On Strong, the debut full-length, needed promoting in 2004. But the five-piece has stuck ever since, gradually informing their recording style with increased collaboration among all. This might be a reason the band’s albums have been so remarkably consistent for over 15 years. Where singer-songwriters in bands formed young often chafe at the old pals who want to contribute more as they ironically become more expendable, Hot Chip came across their interpersonal chemistry after their common musical agenda was established. Alexis can make solo albums, Al can play with LCD Soundsystem, everybody can do DJ nights, until all come back to a group that asks the question “what if you and your buds could just live in the video for New Order's 'The Perfect Kiss?'”

Not that they haven’t had their interpersonal squabbles. “Ready For The Floor,” the band’s sole UK top ten hit, is a plea from Taylor to Goddard for honest communication, hooked around a phrase from the 1989 Batman movie - a familiar nervous tic of dudes my age risking vulnerability. (In case you think the reference was accidental, Taylor goes full “Batdance” cosplay in the video). As Taylor has readily confessed, most of their songs are about some kind of human interaction, whether erotic like “Spell" (originally written for Katy Perry!), romantic like “Take It In” or - most explicitly - platonic, as in their band anthem “Brothers” (“I can play Xbox with my brother/ it’s not about who won or lost with my brother/ we play to be free”).

Befitting a group of likeminded sweethearts who’ve seen each other through decades of life changes, fantasies of being Real Pop Musicians replaced by experience, the ironic giggles of early titles like “You Ride, We Ride, In My Ride” and lyrics like “Hot Chip will break your legs/ snap off your head” have faded over the years, replaced by an awareness that people aren't just listening but younger than them. Their new album, Freakout/Release, has moments of surprising political frankness and self-criticism. “Not Alone” earnestly acknowledges the gender dynamics around being a band of five guys, and “The Evil That Men Do” (featuring Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon) risks embarrassment to plainly assert themselves on the side of progressive change (“it’s okay to let plans crumble and fall/into the ditch we have kicked them/ beg for forgiveness/ bear witness/ be humble”).

As I debate whether Freakout/Release is their best album or just another great one, I figured Hot Chip was a good candidate for an introductory playlist. The one below features something from every album except Coming On Strong (ironically too wan and gestative for my taste, especially in hindsight), with double dips from 2008’s Made In The Dark (the one that got my attention after writing them off initially as cutesy cards), 2010’s One Life Stand and 2012’s In Our Heads. That last album is my pick for best in show, the ballads and bangers never flowing more consistently and exuberantly. But, throughout their career, Hot Chip has provided giddy, glowing evidence of the principle shared on “Huarache Lights”: “machines are great, but best when they come to life."