Hot Chip - One Life Stand

Hot Chip
One Night Stand

As soon as the first song kicks in, you know that Hot Chip’s fourth offering, One Life Stand, is going to be an absolute belter. The floating, soothing and surprisingly beautiful vocals of Alexis Taylor escalate several times, teasing you as to where the tune could possibly go, until the synths kick in at full pace. You soon realise that ‘Thieves in the Night’, the track in question, is – at the very least – the best opener to an album this year.

Whether it’s the complex-yet-simple layering of instruments, the strong lyrics, the song-sustaining guitar solo at the halfway point or the disco-style chorus, it’s probably the best six-minute track that an album’ll give you this year. What’s more, it wouldn’t be out of place on We Are the Night by the Chemical Brothers.

So far so sexy, but in truth, this raw energy soon fizzles out by the time the next track ‘Hand Me Down Your Love’ starts. The truth is that One Life Stand isn’t the One Album To Rule Them All that we were all waiting for from Hot Chip. It’s far from perfect, in fact, and certainly not consistent.

I don’t know exactly what the boys are aiming for with this release, but it’s really puzzling. It’s starting to show that Hot Chip have dug themselves into a bit of a hole, releasing albums to back up great singles instead of getting their solo releases from a great album. It’s about time they got five or six solid tunes from one album; hell, if Kate Nash (aka Lily Allen Lite) was able to eek out Made of Bricks, Hot Chip should be able to dominate with an album too.

At least they indirectly admit to their soft spot for singles by naming One Life Stand after ‘One Life Stand’ instead of a more obscure track that they hope to push by the simple power of nominative association. Despite me already establishing that this approach isn’t great, that’s far from the situation. It’s fine.

After all, the current single of the year is the title track. ‘One Life Stand’ is credited with waking me from my self-imposed slumber when listening to the usual gravy on BBC 6Music and actually listen intently to a song. In fact, I’ve pined for it.

The thumping bass, simple synthesised melody, excellent vocals, well-balanced SFX and disco-tastic chorus, as well as the post-refrain dirty synth, make it the best single in the last couple of months. It blows the current competition out of the water; it makes Editors sound like Vic Reeves in club singer mode and makes Beach House’s ‘Norway’ come across as if they’ve been inspired to base the tune’s wilting, groaning organ on the nation under Nazi occupation during the ’40s.

Either way, ‘One Life Stand’ is as close to perfect as a single comes and seemingly won’t be buried by overplaying, despite hard work by the BBC to jolly well try anyway.

‘Take It In’ completes the Triforce of great songs on One Life Stand. It manages to diminish any residual happiness quite early on with discordant industrial sounds and minor keys before Alexis pulls a belting chorus from his sleeve to restore, and build on, the good feelings you seemingly lost in the formative verse. It’s such a hard thing to describe, but you’ll be glad you listened to the album all the way through when you close on this number.

That’s because the rest of One Life Stand is fair-to-middle. A truly good album should be coal-powered; burning steadily with the odd crackle and spark at the peaks of excitement. With this effort, it’s like ‘Thieves in the Night’, ‘One Life Stand’ and ‘Take It In’ are three nuclear power stations which power themselves to the point of an atomic meltdown of wonder while having a little bit left over to keep the rest of it tolerable enough for the ears.

Some songs show promise but could be better, such as ‘Brothers’, ‘Keep Quiet’ and ‘Alley Cat’, which seem to build up to an anti-climax as if it was actually planned. I’d love for this to be the case, but it’s not going to make the songs completely enjoyable, even if this was what Hot Chip were going for.

Others are plainly mind-numbing. I quite liked ‘Slush’ at first but after a few listens it becomes almost indistinguishable from one of many reflective Housemartins songs, except not as enjoyable or emotional. ‘We Have Love’ is the wet dream of an anti-social teenager’s phone at the back of a bus, despite its best late effort to improve the tempo later in the song. ‘I Feel Better’ could be everything you want, but ends up being very, very disappointing. I’d love to describe it but it made me so devoid on opinions of life, never mind the song.

But, well, I keep listening to this album. I can’t stop. Opinions evolve on each listen to a track on One Life Stand. As a result, you need to get this album and find out if it’s going to float your boat. You may not get your money’s worth, but it’s certainly worth a try.

Hopefully, they’ll commit to producing a full album next time and choosing the singles afterwards; consistency is key to these guys sealing themselves a place in British music history.

Sure, it’s far from perfect, but why should that stop you listening to it? Everyone rants on about how great The Beatles’ White Album is, and quite a bit of that is tommy rot. It didn’t stop us enjoying the rest though, and you’ll enjoy enough of One Life Stand.

One Life Stand is available on February 8th on EMI.

By Matt Gardner