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Hot Chip would make a pretty killer rock band. They just need to work on their set list a bit. Sure, you can play some of the new stuff, but you’ve also got to sprinkle in the hits. You can totally do an encore, but you’ve got to have one bombastic number left in the bag. After all, the kids need something to buzz about as they make their way to the exits.
All of that was abundantly clear on Friday night (February 5) at New York’s Highline Ballroom, as Hot Chip returned to the stage after a brief hiatus for a MySpace Secret Show in support of their brand-new album One Life Stand. It was a rather excellent rock show, with epic light design, massive backbeats and even the occasional guitar thrown in for good measure, but the guys could probably learn a thing or two about pacing.
Opening with a pair of rather jittery songs from Stand — “Thieves in the Night” and “Hand Me Down Your Love” — Hot Chip filled the Highline with warbling synths and pealing organs, the room bathed in a noirish purple haze. Frontman Alexis Taylor, dressed in a long purple shirt and yellow pants (the former of which he’d eventually shed to reveal a pretty excellent Wendy’s tank top), unfurled his impressively lithe pipes, crooning lines like “Baby I’ve lost you here in the crowd/Open your arms, I want to be found” while heads bopped and a million tiny smart phones were held aloft.
From there, the band switched into “Boy From School” (turning the song into a Culture Club-esque exercise in synth balladry) and “One Pure Thought” (which showed off some of Al Doyle’s jangly guitar and threatened to lift the temperature of the room by several degrees Celsius).
Things shifted down from there, with another Stand track, the downright dour “Alley Cats,” and then old favorite “Ready For The Floor,” which was given a majestic, down-tempo makeover on this night.
But then we got hot, the band bobbing heads and going five-synths wide on “Over and Over,” which roiled on electro and guitars and built to a thumping climax, with the guys stop-starting on a dime as lights blinked on and off in perfect unison. The Stand highlight “We Have Love” kept things boiling: A massive, booming club track featuring piston-like backbeats and Taylor’s sexualized singing (”We haaaave loooove,” slinkily done over the pounding). Then the set wrapped with “Hold On,” and the kids in the crowd cheered wildly. An encore was sure to be next, and the place threatened to go bonkers.
Only it didn’t. When they returned to the stage, Hot Chip made the executive decision to pull things down several dozen pegs, wrapping the set with a trio of new songs, one of which (the pretty aptly titled “Slush”) was a pretty limp jazz number — complete with mournful trumpet solo. The closed with “Take It In,” which tried its best to resuscitate the room with twisting electro growls and spy-movie synth lines. But it was pretty much in vain.
And that’s the thing: Hot Chip are a great band. They turn their perceived weaknesses (truckloads of keyboards, five dudes who look like CERN scientists) into strengths. The backbeat is metronomically precise, the heads all move in perfectly synced time, the electronics coo and whir and take you places you never thought possible. The only problem is, the guys can’t do a set list to save their lives, as the soul-sucking encore to Friday’s show can certain attest to. You’d think they would’ve researched this by now, perhaps tested a few hypothesizes or something. They do look like pretty smart guys.