The Hottest Chip Is The Hot Chip: Tonight At The Church

by Vin Varstin

Were it not a for a few small giveaways – a hint of accent here, a reference to Peugeots there – you’d be hard pressed to pin down Hot Chip as a UK band from their live performance alone. They don’t sport the skinny ties or bloc head hairstyles adopted by so many of their contemporaries from across the pond. Their tunes contain nary a trace of Gang of Four or Joy Division or Orange Juice or any other suddenly influential name-drops. None of their songs have been produced or remixed by Paul Epworth. In fact, most of the time it’s Hot Chip that’s doing the remixing. Over the past two years, the Londoners have found themselves employed by Le Tigre, Architecture In Helsinki, The Go! Team, Four Tet and Scissor Sisters, among others.

To this already diverse list of admirers, add one more. James Murphy, the indie-dance golden boy behind LCD Soundsystem and co-founder of DFA Records, recently signed the band to his trendy New York label, and even helped produce their forthcoming sophomore LP and American debut.

Hot Chip’s musical genre may be even harder to pin down than their geographic origin. They use keyboards and drum machines to weave the sort of epic electronic textures you’d likely expect to hear during tomorrow night’s Notwist performance, but are quick to undercut the stuffiness of the technology with piano plunks and guitar funk. Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard, the group’s core duo, play off each other vocally as well, with Taylor’s plaintive falsetto croons alternately supported and challenged by Goddard’s weighty, disaffected baritone. "Playboy", a single culled from their debut LP, Coming On Strong, finds Taylor in the wake of a breakup, caught between mourning and moving on. His doleful verses are assertively answered by a chorus which is nothing short of gangsta'. "Twenty inch rims with the chrome now / blazin’ out Yo La Tengo," promises Goddard, and damned if it doesn’t sound like a ride worth taking.

The group’s unique, self-aware sense of humor is featured on many of their tracks, though never to the point of being campy or at the expense of some larger musical goal. On the Stevie Wonder-infatuated "Keep Fallin'," they boast about dropping grooves hot enough to "move you like you stood in something nasty," but sneak school tuition in amongst the list of luxury expenses on which they plan to blow their bling money.

The range of influences that exert themselves within each Hot Chip song - from Prince to Madlib to The Beach Boys – results in a live performance that far exceeds your standard indie-electronic fare. The group incorporates multi-instrumental theatrics, shifting its five-man roster into a number of different looks, and brings the funk with energy and intensity that George Clinton could only hope to muster nowadays. In their first ever US show, back in March of this year, they quite handily upstaged a very buzzed-about Maximo Park, getting the crowd’s hips shaking with a severity that the Franz-a-likes never managed to duplicate.

Catch Hot Chip tonight at 8:00 PM in the First Unitarian Church basment, where they’ll be sandwiched in between opening act Koushik and headliner Four Tet. For more information, free Hot Chip mp3s, and on-line ticketing, check the R5 Productions Calendar