Hot Chip
The Warning

THE REVIEW

Another product of the cooler than thou culture that characterizes these cubed eighties, which are the '00s, the Hot Chip album has everything it needs to be appreciated.

A piece of classy modernism, ideas borrowed from every possible and imaginable musical era, cheerful and danceable rhythms to make the new millennium indiekid dance, tired of being cooped up in their room feeling like a loser. So here comes the freak electronic of "Careful", with the sweet vocal pop taking delicate steps along the Notwist/Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service line but with rhythms decisively more suited to get people moving, from the electrofunk of "And I Was a Boy From School" to the dream pop for the realistic crowd of "Colours" to the little masterpiece of "Over and Over", a masterful single that manages to really get you moving and simultaneously reference Krautrock Kraftrock at the moment it spells on a carpet of soft keyboards.

In short, all the electronics are here, massive doses of the seventies, eighties, nineties, and even the recent ones. And so we're left in awe by the archaeologically perfect reconstruction of certain dark synthpop revived in "Arrest Yourself" that almost recalls the early Human League or the triumphant nineties disco of "No Fit State".

Hot Chip can hold their own even on slower and more delicate rhythms, just listen to the title-track. No doubt about it, a job well done, à la mode, with all the trimmings, nothing out of place, just as it should be now. The only doubt then is that we are facing a work of high industry rather than creative craftsmanship, a job by capable, practical people who know what they want and how to get it, people never out of place, always hip, hot, cool, vip, chic. In short, people like now, well-behaved, fundamentally integrated even when they are rebellious.

And then a bit of nostalgia arises for certain times when the crazy and the demented thrived, at least in the world of youth.

Syd Barrett R.I.P.