{grate 4} If an album’s sound is indicative of how much booty the
artists are going to get, then Hot Chip’s third endeavor, Made in the Dark,
will score these geeks a healthy helping of poontang. The record bounces
between sweet love ballads and powerful club mixes in a seamless balance of
frivolity and synth, with money-makers like “Ready for the Floor” tearing up
the speakers. The repetition of “Do it do it do it do it do it now” rings out
like a command in the night, a command to shake your thang.
Filled with keyboard tinkering, samba beats and the keen
call of frontman Alexis Taylor, most of the songs coalesce into infectious bits
of electro-pop. They call to the carefree kid inside all of us, the one from
the early ’90s who used to watch “Saved by the
and laughed at Jessie Spano when she had that caffeine-induced breakdown.
But these snarky kids are all grown up and coming strong
with the lyrics. Their rap repartee is witty as hell, especially in ditties
like “Wrestlers” where they dish out a bitch fight; “So why’d you go and have
to fight dirty?/ Don’t fight dirty, don’t bite me in the face.”
At first, the droll ballads fade into the shadows of the
heavier dance-rock tracks. But on the second or third go-round, the seemingly
meeker songs stake out an earnest beauty with serenades like “We’re Looking For
a Lot of Love.” The track’s dreamy quality and echoey sadness are reminiscent
of a somewhat-less-depressed Postal Service.
But the rump-shakin’ continues after the umpteenth listen
and the slower ballads dig a little deeper into that techno-loving center of
your brain. Even when Hot Chip slow it down a little too much, as in “Made in
the Dark,” they quickly regain their footing and pump out more energetic
ingenuity. Made in the Dark easily makes any party playlist, to be set on
repeat.
