Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY
With French Horn Rebellion
Words by Cameron Cook
Photos by Abbey Braden

While waiting for Hot Chip to take the stage this past Saturday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg, my friend Bill turned to me and pointed out that the general ambiance of the event was similar to the time that LCD Soundsystem played Bowery Ballroom in early 2007: the excitement of seeing a very popular band at their prime in a mid-sized venue was palpable. At the time, I remember strangers making conniving eye contact, silently signaling that, when the shit would finally pop off, we’d all be in this mess together (on the flipside I actually don’t remember much else from that LCD show, except for almost getting fatally trampled during “Movement”.) Another interesting parallel being that Hot Chip’s Al Doyle was on guitar duties with LCD that night, a fact that now closes some sort of believe-the-hype mystic circle.

When Hot Chip did finally appear onstage, Britannically punctual, the low sizzle that had energized the room for the past hour (and all throughout a surprisingly amusing and adorable opening set by joke-ish electro-indie outfit French Horn Rebellion) rumbled and erupted into a full-blown, frenetically wild, final-stages-of-terminal-rabies frenzy that did not cease for the better part of 90 minutes. While I imagine that being met with that sort of sheer admiration night after night must instill some sort of mixture of ecstasy and nervousness within oneself, Alexis, Joe, Al, Felix and Owen seized the opportunity to reign in the crowd and gleefully, almost smugly, press each and every one of their buttons. Much like their brilliant new long player, One Life Stand, the show’s composition owed a lot to Chicago (and subsequently, UK) house music—a four/four beat was prevalent in just about every song performed, from the future synth classic and set opener “Thieves in the Night”, to “Boy From School”, possibly the best track off of 2006’s The Warning and transformed here from soothingly mopey, mid-tempo space disco to mind-melting rave up. If anyone in the room had any doubts whether Hot Chip could pull off virtually any arrangement of their songs with nothing short of poise and genius, they were put to rest in that moment.

Most of the material in the set was taken from Hot Chip’s two most recent albums, One Life Stand and 2008’s Made in the Dark, though “No Fit State” from The Warning got an interesting airing-out towards the end of the show (sadly, the Pet Shop Boys-esque “Brothers” from Stand was presumably left on the rehearsal room floor). Other than those, the usual suspects were dutifully trotted out and fawned over: “Ready For the Floor” got the loudest crowd response, out of lots and lots of very loud crowd responses (can you imagine if Kylie Minogue had taken the band’s offer to record that track, as it had been rumored at the time?) with “Over and Over” coming in at a very close second. If anything, the set’s only hiccup was during the encore—typically I would have found Alexis and Joe’s rendition of Stand’s piano ballad “Slush” endearing, but after having the sweat beat out of me by screaming dance hit after screaming dance hit, it seemed like an unnecessary comedown when the venue was clearly still high as fuck.

Apart from writing gorgeous, intelligent pop songs and never having released a dud in their career, what we find attractive about Hop Chip, what makes us root for them and what makes them unite people, is the fact that in this day and age, here are a bunch of true music fans, real music nerds, who have conquered the international scene not by looks or hype or blogs or Twitter, but by raw talent. There was a time when the majority of musical acts were like that, but now it seems only a small bastion of bands can sustain themselves on nothing but the force of their songs, and Hot Chip are one of those lucky few. They love what they do and we love them for it.

At the end of the show, I found my friend Bill near the back bar. As soon as I walked up to him he enthusiastically declared that that night Hot Chip had played the best show he had even seen them perform. I agreed, because he was right.