Hot Chip has a thing for repetition. On their 2006 breakthrough The Warning and 2008’s Made in the Dark, the U.K. dance-rock group featured pounding rhythms and soaring falsettos. Songs with catchy refrains, like “Over and Over” and “Ready for the Floor,” hooked you by the feet and dragged you joyously through the entire record.
The group’s new release, One Life Stand, mainly adheres to this same golden formula. The opener “Thieves in the Night” is all pounding bass, synthesizer and singer Alexis Taylor’s arctic falsetto. “I Feel Better” opens with Joe Goddard’s gruff, Auto-Tuned voice, before Taylor joins in on a cutting chorus laced with steel drum: “This is the longest night/We’re meeting arms to arms.”
The stellar title track—already being remixed all over the place in true Hot Chip tradition—is an appeal to a woman for a steady relationship. Somehow, “One Life Stand” makes this subject funkalicious with a rubbery Bootsy Collins bass line. The chorus vamps the pun into full effect, with Taylor pleading, “I only want to be your one life stand/Tell me do you stand by your whole man?”
Romantic themes reappear on the balladry of “Slush” and “Alley Cats.” Hot Chip even uses acoustic piano to let you know they mean business. These songs are a pleasant lull before “We Have Love” jolts the record back on course, using a crazed beat that recalls M.I.A.’s “Birdflu.”
One Night Stand is Hot Chip’s way of declaring, “We are consistent!” With nary an unlistenable song, look for this record on 2010 best-of lists come December.
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