Let us now praise famous men; Public Enemy, Brian Eno, Brian Wilson, LCD Soundsystem, Solomon Burke, Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin and Phil Spector are among some of the league of extraordinary gentlemen held by Hot Chip in blind, unfettered idolatry.
The synth-rock (or electro-indie if you like) bedroom ascetics – who heretofore brought you the charming line “I’m like Stevie Wonder, but I can see things” – have by their own acknowledgement looted the mechanical music museum, spending a lifetime distilling their record collection into manageable, tongue-in-cheek precipitates like whiskey or MSG.
Post Moshi Moshi records, the half-men, half-synth Londoners do soulful electronica on ‘Colours’, where Postal Service-type lyrics and a ubiquitous drum machine make for variegated, winsome prettiness. There's some po-mo Kraftwerk charm on ‘The Warning’ (where head boy Alexis Taylor croons ever so seductively: “Hot Chip will break your legs, snap off your head”), following which ‘Arrest Yourself’ ( read: Charles Wright and The Watts’ ‘Express Yourself’) guides us along the funk segment of Hot Chip’s mini music tour. The UK top-40 reaching ‘Over And Over’ is a cheerful treatise on repetition, the inane sentiments of monkeys with miniature cymbals sitting surprisingly well with the consummate accomplishment of ‘Boy From School’.
The Warning bears no cataclysmic revelations, and in its dilettantish appropriation of the highlights of the canon could be construed as another sample-laden gimcrack if it weren’t for the band’s manifesto: an uncynical bid to provoke the same fervour and enjoyment of pop music in their listeners.
If you’d like your LCD Soundsystem a little less disco-tastic and if you’d climb over a vintage Martin acoustic to get to a Teisco 60F, you could do worse.