Album Review: Hot Chip, Freakout/Release

I always reckoned the splendid tale of Samuel Beckett driving a young André The Giant to school, during their Parisian days, would make a great theme for a song. Bizarrely, Hot Chip deliver a funky, shake-your-disco-ass version of it on ‘Eleanor’.

It’s made all the more wonderful knowing that Freakout/Release is being billed as the band’s dark record – the gloaming has never sounded so rapturous. Album opener ‘Down’ descends on the silvery riff of the Universal Togetherness Band’s ‘More Than Enough’, into a subterranean club, and the explosion of a delirious mob hoofing about, bleating about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Created at the band’s aptly named Relax & Enjoy studio, and inspired by a Hot Chip set-list favourite – Beastie Boys’ ‘Sabotage’ – the mantra of being positively out of control is writ large. The Soulwax collaboration on the title-track suggests a wild beast, cooped up all through lockdown, being released into the glaring strobes and klaxon synths of a riotous club.

Hot Chip also explore lounge vibes on ‘Broken’, ‘Not Alone’ and ‘Hard To Be Funky’ featuring Lou Hayter. ‘Time’ is a playful antidote to ‘No God’ from 2019’s A Bath Full Of Ecstasy, while ‘Miss The Bliss’ boasts a house music-style, call-and-response refrain. That flows into ‘The Evil That Men Do’ featuring Cadence Weapon, before ‘Out Of My Depth’ – a disco ballad that dallies with Sgt. Pepper’s 'A Day In The Life’ – closes a quality album.

7/10