[Tracks + Thoughts] Hot Chip
(In case it isn’t clear, my tongue is partially in cheek here, though I do think about this stuff far too much. And to my older readers, 35 isn’t old, don’t worry about it.)
The evolution of taste is a topic I have considered frequently over the past few years. I’m primarily concerned with how people grow as appreciators of culture. The scope of my own admiration in music, art, film, radio programming and television has expanded enormously over the last decade. In the early part of the aughts, I was in high school. I thought I was hip (the 1950s sense of the word is implied, not the hipster sense) because I listened to Reflection Eternal and 2001 on repeat. Because I knew who Banksy was. Because I was bullshit when Gladiator won the Best Picture Oscar and again when Renée Zellweger was nominated for Best Actress for Bridget Jones’s Diary. Because I enjoyed listening to Car Talk with my dad on Saturday mornings. And because I watched The West Wing. (I also mistook having tastes slightly left of the mainstream as having personal depth. Thank you to all that is holy that this phase has passed.)
As I’ve gotten older, I now know that not only was I not hip, but that I also had, and still have, quite a bit of room to grow into. I’ve gotten less pretentious about my consumption of culture. More importantly, my tastes for music have developed. I’m curious about these developments, but rather than look back at my evolution from a backpack kid to an all-around music appreciator, I’m more interested in the developments to come in the future.
In the abstract, ten years does not seem like all that much. I am a different person than I was at 15 in 2000, but the framework is more or less the same. As I write this, I am 25 years old. I have a vague idea of where my career is headed and things are generally stable in my life. Musically speaking, I currently love electronic dance music. I recently proclaimed Daft Punk as my favorite contemporary recording group. This is an appropriate style of music for a 25 year-old to enjoy. Though our college friends will tell you, dear reader, otherwise, I am not yet an old man. Some of the best nights of my life involved sweating through my shirt dancing. I am not yet old. Right, guys? I keep telling myself this.
Fast-forward ten years. It’s 2020. I’m 35. I’m living a slightly less transitive lifestyle. Maybe I’m married. Maybe I have kids.
Where does my musical palate go from here? What will I listen to? Will I listen to Ready to Die the same way my parents listened to Are You Experienced and Thriller? Will I think about bloghaus and chillwave and GorillavsBearcore the way my parents think about soul, prog rock and disco, only putting them on when expounding to my kids on the good old days? Will I be one of those insufferable “cool” dads, listening to the future equivalents of She and Him and The Avett Brothers because Bob Boilen rambles on about their greatness? (Name drop city right there…sorry.)
While considering the upcoming decade in both music and my life, I have found myself paying closer attention to the growth of bands and artists. As a lifelong fan of rap, there comes a point in every rappers career where they’re just too old to stay relevant. They can no longer relate to their audience (be it full of young black men or white teenage girls) and often put out a desperation record or three to middling success.
The aughts introduced to scads of new artists, bands and side projects and I’m eager to see not only who from this decade is able to stay relevant and but also who holds the attention of our generation as our situations and lifestyles rapidly change. What will come of Justice or Freddie Gibbs or Architecture in Helsinki or Deerhunter? In, for lack of a better name, the indie/P4k/blog world, there weren’t a lot of bands that maintained or expanded upon their level of success or credibility through the last transition of decades. Radiohead, Beck, The Flaming Lips, Spoon, Yo La Tengo and Daft Punk are the obvious examples; the groundwork for the popularity of Merge Records and the Elephant Six Collective was laid in the 90s. But there aren’t many cases to point to who have been able to span decades with their success.
(Aside: an inability to stay relevant is due to a number of issues, but to name three factors with lots of subfactors: 1. Growing older and seeming less cool; 2. Changes in the industry that the artists either can’t comprehend – think Metallica and file-sharing – or can’t adjust to – think the longer touring schedules now requisite to make money from music; 3. Not being able to determine what’s good either because: a. the artist can’t make music their fans want to listen to as their fans get older…the artist either refuses to age and makes the same music they were making at 22 or makes a bizarre album that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything OR b. with success has come yes-men who don’t tell the artist their shit stinks. Balancing any or all of these is a difficult task.)
Hot Chip is a band that appears to be managing these difficult factors as they’ve evolved. Hot Chip’s Made in the Dark was one of the massive records of 2008, with critical success and tracks in everyone’s playlist rotation throughout the year. (I missed the first time around, only to make an ass of myself telling people how great they were months after the album’s release. Thanks to a friend of friend who hooked it up with a promo copy of One Life Stand; I wont be that guy this time around.) I was expecting a less mature effort from Hot Chip for their follow-up. After all, these are the young men from England who put out party track “Shake a Fist,” were remixed by Diplo and were among the hottest shows during their North American tours.
One Life Stand marks a transition for Hot Chip. This is a band that understands that just because lightning struck with Made in the Dark does not mean they can rest on their laurels. One Life Stand is not a shift akin in size to that of Radiohead’s Kid A, but the album does show a different side of the band, one that was only present in short bursts on their previous albums. The mega jams are still there; I’ll put “I Feel Better” and “We Have Love” up against anything out there at the moment. But the construction of these tracks is distinct from their equals on previous albums. “I Feel Better” borrows a synth sound more at home on a Sisquo backing track and makes it new, creating an irresistible toe-tapper/head-bobber/stanky-leg-wagger. “We Have Love” uses a simple sample to set the tone and doesn’t rely heavily on the synth. Instead, the driving forces in the track are the repeated dreamy refrain of “We Have Love,” a rapid drum beat and a wahwah-y bass affect taken straight from the dubstep toolbox.
As much as I fiend for the jams, it’s the down-tempo tracks that really make One Life Stand what it is. The album’s title track first appears as a jam, and with the heavy drums or calypso influences, I guess it is. But it’s also a ballad of sorts, as Joe Goddard longs “I only wanna be your one life stand. Tell me, do you stand by your man?” This idea of commitment was a bit surprising, but the sentimentality continues throughout the album. “Brothers” is, as expected, an ode to familial love. In “Slush,” all three vocalists – Goddard, Alexis Taylor and Al Doyle – sing in the chorus, “Now that we’re older, there’s more that we must do. The songs to remember, remember why love is with you.”
One Life Stand is about growing up and with its lyrics, so too, has the band’s sound matured. The bangers are still present, but they don’t define the album the same way they did on Made in the Dark. It’s tough to predict commercial success or breakthrough records and performances, and we have no way of knowing if this album will mark a turning point for Hot Chip towards mainstream recognition. Ten years from now, Hot Chip could be the equivalent of 90s U2. Ten years from now, Hot Chip could no longer be making music. It’s all on the table. But if nothing else, Hot Chip is dealing with growing older gracefully, unlike so many artists and bands to come before them. It’s nice to know somebody else is thinking about this sort of thing.
mp3: Hot Chip – I Feel Better
mp3: Hot Chip – Alley Cats
mp3: Hot Chip – We Have Love
