So anyway here's that Hot Club review I mentioned a while ago which after sending it to 3 publications was eventually accepted by FACT, but I can't find a link to it there, perhaps it's in the paper edition.


With Days Like This as Cheap as Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want to Work?


“They shoot horses, don’t they?” So Horace McCoy asked us during the depression, and so Hot Club de Paris ask us in the present, on the fourth song from their new EP. And it’s a good reference point for Hot Club; the lyrics feel like they’ve been lifted from mid-20th Century American literature, with talk of dance marathons, cops looking for guns long since thrown into the river, and a car sinking in a lake with its inhabitants tapping out a (no doubt atypical) rhythm on the window pane. ‘Dog Tired..’ and ‘Extra Time Then Sudden Death’ are the best tracks here, both fizz with images and doodling guitar lines, working in harmony to produce the most bizarrely anthemic songs you’ll hear this year. It’s exactly what you’d want from a Hot Club EP (though it’s almost as long as their albums, with fewer tracks); unusual and lyrical music about the small things in life and how, when laid out one after the other in a song, they amount to something quite extraordinary. It’s quite like Joanna Newsom in that sense, and also in the sense that both are very good. Hot Club always feel like old friends and this EP fits like a glove from the first listen.


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Also Gavin, anti-Kantian that he (sometimes) is, used me as a means to an end, and without my consent sent my Hot Chip review to a site he writes for after it was rejected by my student paper in favour of a negative review, which felt like a girl you give a lovingly crafted valentines card to ripping it up and getting off with a guy who punched her in the face instead. I imagine. Anyway, thanks to Gavin, as it turned up on google news (which I think means it was widely read?)

http://www.musicvice.com/reviews/albums/hot-chip-one-life-stand-260210

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The reason I link to it is cos they highlight the Amy Winehouse/Duffy diss. Cos this is a good comparison. Hot Chip are primarily a soul band as far as I'm concerned, and it's always been obvious to me that this is the best tag to give them. You could really hear the Destiny's Child influence in their early singles (take B-side 'The Girl in Me' as undeniable evidence for this). Crap journalists call them electro pop cos they have synths, which is like saying Black Sabbath are the same genre as Django Reinhardt as they both use guitars (there's also another link between the two which music nerds will see stand out like a sore thumb). Shit like this is what I hear in my head when I hear the term 'electro-pop', music that comes on in Topman and makes me feel alone. Hot Chip are a soul band. 'One Life Stand' is the 21st century version of Take Me to the River.

(Incidentally the review that my student paper ran with described 'We Have Love' as 'dubstep' which is just buuuuullshiiiiittt)

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Lazy Hot Chip journalism was also responsible for a lot of papers saying that 'every song on the record feels like a single', which they're only saying cos Joe said he wanted to write such an album, and simply ISN'T true, given that 3 tracks are very long and without choruses (Alley Cats, Brothers, Slush) and Thieves in the Night could never be a single, for anybody. That's half the album gone, cockles.


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Very good b-side. Remember 'let's build a home' by the white stripes? And put my best friends in whhhhhhhhhOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP





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still on a hunt for one life stand remixes...


and despite appearances this blog is NOT becoming a Hot Chip fan site, if you're worrying.






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(Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Django Reinhardt both have disfigured fretting hands. Sore thumb, geddit?)