I love music and am always excited by the role it plays as a cultural artifact in a simultaneously personal and popular fashion. Artists beget styles that form genres and trends, which can reflect the zeitgeist on a provincial, national or international level. A great deal of social history can be gleaned from a record; in turn, I, as an individual, may have memories of significant events in my life tied to the reverberations that happened to seep out of the speakers around me during these vital moments.
Much of my writing for Folkways Magazine up to this point has focused on this phenomenon in relation to nostalgia. I love to write about the albums that served as a soundtrack to my favorite summer, childhood trips to the mall or musical revelations with friends. It should be addressed though, that there are moments in your life that you can sense are going to be memorable while you are living them. It is in the midst of just such a moment that I began preparing for my review of One Life Stand by Hot Chip.
In the past I had not spent very much time paying attention to Hot Chip. This changed when Pitchfork released their list of the best tracks of the first decade of the 2000’s. The top two hundred songs on the list included three selections by Hot Chip and one of them stood out to me in particular: “Ready for the Floor”. It is an incredible song with an addictively manic sense of fun which makes it compulsively listenable and so, I began to listen compulsively. It got to the point where that single song alone scored entire car rides. Not long after the addition of “Ready for the Floor” to my daily playlist, I found myself spending a lot more time thinking about and discussing the nature of electronic pop music. It should be noted that this interest was inspired by the conversations I was having with an incredibly charming woman whose acquaintance I had recently made.
Predictably, it did not take very much time for me to recommend that she check out “Ready For the Floor” because it was now one of my favorite songs. She, in turn, gave a positive review to the remainder of the album from which the single was taken and it was not long before I had purchased a few of their LPs including their newest One Life Stand.
One Life Stand is different from the other Hot Chip LPs I have heard because it focuses almost entirely on an often disco-tinged style of balladry which foregoes the frenzied up-tempo tracks which were usually highlighted in their singles. On first listen, I liked it but was slightly disappointed by the narrow-minded focus. Having now listened to it dozens of times, I can attest that the appeal of this record expands exponentially as the listener becomes more familiar with the melodies and the terrific production flourishes which are inextricably linked to them. The experience of hearing it on headphones was a major turning point for me which highlighted the layers of sounds weaved throughout each song. This is an album that will sneak in through your ears and get stuck in your head without you even realizing it.
Despite the (comparably) slower tempo, this is still undeniably a dance album which certainly does its’ job. With this in mind, the lyrical focus on monogamy becomes strikingly unique. Almost every song is a love song which romanticizes the idea of finding someone to settle down (and I guess dance) with: a ‘one life stand’.
It isn’t hard to understand why I like this album so much when I had the complete opposite reaction to similarly disco-influenced albums from the past year: Hot Chip is really good at it whereas a band like the Apples in Stereo just give the impression that they are goofing around. Songs such as “Hand Me Down Your Love”, “We Have Love”, “Alley Cats” and especially “Thieves in the Night” are great regardless of genre or instrumentation. The sound supports the songwriting as opposed to the songwriting supporting the sound; this is the problem which has plagued many other albums released this year.
It is unavoidable that this album will become a part of my personal history: it seems that whenever I am listening to it, I am also talking to the girl I mentioned earlier. Hot Chip has taken on the inescapable task of scoring one of my future memories; I think it may be a perfect fit.
