Hot Chip: Made in the Dark

Label: DFA/Astralwerks

The third studio album by London-based musical postmodern hipsters Hot Chip is another soaring triumph, a surefire dancefloor hit that more than manages to live up to the great promise of their 2006 breakthrough, The Warning. Miraculously the band can juxtapose electro-pop dance-floor filler tracks with syrupy piano ballads such as “Made in the Dark” and “In the Privacy of Our Love.” The quintet gets the party started with the opening track “Out at the Pictures” and its motoring Krautrock-ish keyboard line that speeds up to meet a fully industrial beat. Also watch out for the Todd Rundgren vocal sample on “Shake a Fist” that introduces a digital fury of scratchy keyboard lines and the deliriously catchy “Ready for the Floor”. Hot Chip have productively taken one step forward towards the more mainstream territory of the Chemical Brothers and their catchy, fist-pumping choruses with Made in the Dark. And what other band could pull off the gloriously wacky lyrics “Half-nelson, full-nelson, Willie Nelson” amid the R&B musings of “Wrestlers”? (Morgane)