Slightly short of a masterpiece. I don’t know much about Hot Chip. A week before I first heard this record, their 2006 tune “Over And Over” played on a barroom juke box and I recall thinking, “what an annoying song.” I may have winced at a photo of them dressed in that ultra-ironic style with which only Londoners can trump Brooklynites in terms of garishness. That was the extent of my knowledge. So I can’t tell you about how this record (their fourth studio recording) sits in context to their previous releases. I don’t know anything about the backstory of the band, their previous accolades, their critics–none of it. All I have is this brilliant, effusive, bubbling little record. It spans decades of songwriting and production styles, canvasses a multitude of emotions, and falls a hair below uninterrupted brilliance.
Something I’ve often noticed with popular modern English music is its willingness to embrace elements of popular culture that might be considered gauche in current prisms. The Klaxons did so with rave (perhaps only to the extent of their clothing; it’s debatable) and Lily Allen embraced a ska sensibility long after the fashionable porkpie hats. Naturally, One Life Stand begins with an onslaught of retro instrumentation: squiggly synths, string samples, Big Beat kicks… Only the production standard (effervescent in its mixing–one of the more modernistic electronic treatments I’ve heard in a while) betrays that this wasn’t a 1992 release. On first listen, I was tempted to write it off. Another London Group Without Originality Replicates The Past (La Roux, anyone?). It’s not that easy to dismiss, however. Perhaps the chap with the Keytar really is a virtuoso.
After the triumvirate of throwbacks to the 90s, Stand eases itself into the album’s first single and title track. It’s a song that needs coaxing to achieve full greatness–many of the tracks on this album do, in fact songs hit the bridge and change course dramatically in several instances. Layering steel drums, hand claps and laser stabs over a stubby, sawtooth bass line, Hot Chip slide into a smooth vocal mix repeating a simple mantra, “I only want to be your one life stand/Tell me, do you stand by your man?” Slightly distorted synth– I could have sworn I heard on Momus’ 1988 Tender Pervert LP– separate verses with some more of the record’s previous retro embrace. Five minutes later and the band has seemingly felt emboldened, ready to take a chance (the oddly hypnotic “Slush”).
Lyrical simplicity is another of the nice little nuances found here. Nothing gets too complex or long-winded. Probably the most matter-of-fact couplets we hear are on the outstanding track “Alley Cats”: “Well, we sleep inside of blankets in bed/Planted like the crocuses/And I wish my mother could/See the ring I bought”. It’s one of the few instances of the lyrics of Stand explicitly telling a story, quickly fading back to the overlying ethos of the record’s words–more ideas rather than recollections, “You painted a song/It started when I was young/Now it is in my lung”.
One Life Stand never really changes from its foundation of synth-based dance music. It’s what’s added in the small fills, the breaks before a chorus or bridge that make the lasting difference. It’s the song structure, the turns into darkness (or euphoria, on terrific closer “Take It In”) that set the album apart from the rest. So what makes it one pound less than a grand?
Well, two songs, to be specific. Penultimate track “Keep Quiet” seems almost sheepishly formulaic; it has none of the lily-gilding touches of brilliance that grace the other tracks, nor the personality to survive on its own. “Brothers,” a sort of pub chant-cum-Pulp riff falls into annoying territory after third listen. Too bad. One Life Stand is one of those records anyone who loves music is elated to find: a surprise turn, a changed opinion, an album that seizes your emotions for a good week or two and leaves you obsessed. It’s a record bathed in aural references to the past yet feels cutting-edge. I just wish it was one that I could turn on and let play out in its entire, evocative glory.
