There was the interplay of dual vocalists Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard, Taylor’s pleasing and wispy voice the cooing and meditative counterpart to Goddard’s husky, bearish sing-speak croon. The raw elements were in place though, just waiting to be refined. The chintzy toy synths of their debut were nowhere near the tools necessary for this band to communicate the ebullience that’d soon become their calling card. If anything, Coming On Strong lives on as the weaker beginning of this band not because of its disposition, but because they took that blueprint and blew it out into all sorts of vibrant colors as their career progressed. But they weren’t messing with us back then they did love those genres, and it was an earnest tribute. This set the stage for an early perception of Hot Chip, that they were ironic pranksters built from and for an era of hipster performativity. Was it genuine tribute? Were they just nerds poking fun at pop music? Were they just some British dudes who really wanted to make pop music but only had the means to produce a sort of pastiche? The lyrics were littered with sardonic asides riffing off the tropes of those genres. Here were five pasty British guys making homemade electronic music that took aesthetic cues from black American music including R&B and hip-hop. Their debut, 2004’s Coming On Strong, was in some ways a blueprint and in some ways misleading. But it didn’t start out at that way, and reducing Hot Chip to their consistency has an inherent danger of consigning them to comfort food and of missing the little facets that make their arc interesting. Yes, this is a band that comes across like they write hooks and big technicolor synth lines in their sleep. Now it’s been three years since Hot Chip’s last album, 2015’s Why Make Sense?, plenty of time for the dust to have settled on that chapter of their career, and more time to recontextualize all that preceded it. When artists simply keep plugging away, periodically releasing another album that moves their sound in increments and reassures you that their attention to craft and bulletproof songwriting has not dwindled, it’s easy to take them for granted. But reliability isn’t much of a narrative - just ask Spoon. Up until recently, you got a Hot Chip album every two years, and you could always rely on them to have at least a few ridiculously catchy bangers, a handful of new songs you couldn’t wait to hear live. For nearly 15 years now, Hot Chip have been releasing effervescent, wildly infectious synthpop albums like clockwork.
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