Ready for the floor
Going along to see Hot Chip tonight. If the gig as only half as good as last Monday night's one in London, we'll be well pleased. The band were at the Brixton Academy a week ago and Ludovic Hunter-Tilney went along to review the show. He brought with him a vocabulary to match that name: "The set began with a jokey coup de théâtre as a brass band in evening dress filed on stage and launched into a stentorian medley of Hot Chip songs. It was an inspired opening, serving to underline not only the infectious harmonies at the heart of their fidgety electropop but also its humour."
Guess it pays to be extra erudite when one is writing for the Financial Times. Anyway, anything that brings "an essentially comic outlook to pop music" is to be welcomed in these days of lugubrious Neil Youngism, and a "fierce but cheery four-to-the-floor techno rush" is certainly something to look forward to. To take part in, perhaps.
Back to Hunter-Tilney: "The songs were lithe and twisty, prone to erupt suddenly into huge keyboard breaks as during 'Ready for the Floor'. A light-hearted foray into R. Kelly-style R&B, 'Wrestlers', moved towards 'guilty pleasure' territory, yet its smile was genuine. 'Is this freedom?' the chorus to 'Don't Dance' asked, as a mighty surge of synthesisers answered in the affirmative. There are few bands as liberating." The bar has been raised. Expectations are high. We're ready for the floor.
