Which Hot Chip records are particularly worth it? Click here to check!
With their second album THE WARNING in 2006, Hot Chip played their way into the hearts of the post-indie generation through the back door. The band from London brings apparent opposites together: melancholy and danceability, melodies and beats, pop and experiments. The five Englishmen draw their creative strength from the different musical socializations of the two founding members Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard. And at the end there is a discography in which the “worst” album is still good.
Editorial recommendations
HOTTEST CHIP
The Warning (2006)
What an album! Using their geeky knowledge of 40 years of pop history, these Londoners collage a highly supple, dance- and song-friendly marvel. Pop, disco, house, gospel, folk, R’n’B and funk become hot chip music under the direction of Alexi Taylor and Joe Goddard and the band themselves soon become the big consensus in the post-indie era. Almost every song on THE WARNING is a hit: “Boy From School”, “Colours”, “Over And Over”, “Just Like We (Breakdown)” and, and, and. Indietronics is well known, but the way in which the “joy of repetition” of electronic music is married with traditionalist pop virtues is unprecedented.
Six stars
HOT CHIP
Made In The Dark (2008)
“Are you ready for the floor?” Hot Chip ask in the Grammy-nominated hit from their third album. But even if you’re not prepared to move your body rhythmically to this music, you’ll get something out of it. At first glance, everything on MADE IN THE DARK seems a bit overambitious. Hot Chip have a lot going for them on this album, there are excursions into electro-rock, country, tribal beats, hints of rock guitars, distorted techno beats, and the ballads exude a certain Marvin Gaye-ness. But all of this only serves as a glaze for a collection of songs with irresistible pop melodies.
Five and a half stars
In Our Heads (2012)
As if a weight had been lifted from the shoulders of these very serious young men. Hot Chip’s fifth album doesn’t have any melancholic ruminations, instead it exudes good vibrations from start to finish without degenerating into a happy-go-lucky singalong. IN OUR HEADS is the band’s dancefloor album, its roots go back to the eighties and nineties. There are playful synthesizer melodies, sometimes cheesy effects from past dance eras and powerful beats that situate the music in the present. And the complex house blueprint “Flutes” is a hot chip song for the ages.
Five and a half stars
Why Make Sense? (2015)
On some albums, Hot Chip mainly operate in a musical triangle with Prince, Kraftwerk and Daft Punk at the corners. In principle, this also applies to their sixth album, but WHY MAKE SENSE also draws on R’n’B, old school house and hip hop. In general, the Londoners let the funk out of the stable on this album. Some backing tracks (“Love Is The Future,” “Started Right”) sound like the hottest electro-funk of the season. And in the title song, Alexis Taylor asks a question that seems even more important today than it did ten years ago: “Why make sense when the world around us refuses?”
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HOT CHIP
Coming On Strong (2004)
Most listeners only get to know Hot Chip with their second album because that marks the band’s breakthrough. But there was a life for Londoners before THE WARNING, and it wasn’t all that boring. The debut album COMING ON STRONG already contains everything that defines Hot Chip and later turns them into indie darlings. It is a collection of minimalist downtempo funk and soul variations that were created with knowledge of the laws of indie pop. Unfortunately, this little masterpiece was lost in the noise surrounding The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines.
Four and a half stars
One Life Stand (2010)
An album with the overarching theme of monogamy, a ONE LIFE STAND, isn’t necessarily what one generally associates with pop’s unholy trinity: sex and drugs and rock and roll. The band’s fourth album is characterized by introspection and melancholy. Musically there are no big outliers, not the ultimate floor filler, not the really big tear-jerking ballad. It seems as if Hot Chip have cut the swings at the top and bottom of their stylistic scale and, for the first time, made something that they are always accused of doing: a 100% synth-pop album.
Four stars
A Bathfull Of Ecstasy (2019)
For the first time, Hot Chip are working with external producers: They have hired the Scot Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, FKA Twigs, Sampha) and Philippe Zdar from the French house duo Cassius to collaborate. Zdar tragically dies two days before the album’s release. Above all, he is the one who gives the dancefloor melancholy on the band’s seventh album the buttery French touch. It’s the little experimental outliers in the sound and song structures that draw the line to the pop mainstream. Hot Chip can do no wrong, even their supposedly worst album is still good.
Four stars
Freakout/Release (2022)
On the band’s last studio album to date, the streamlined pop of its predecessor A BATHFULL OF ECSTASY is still present in homeopathic doses. The whispered “Not Alone” seems like a mixture of Taylor Swift and Bon Iver. But immediately afterwards, Hot Chip takes the title of this song to absurdity with “Hard To Be Funky” and reminds us that they are the band that released the modern classic THE WARNING 16 years earlier. There are consciously placed turning points like the robotic vocoder voice in the title song and the disco-punky bouncer “Out Of My Depth” that prevent Hot Chip from becoming Katy Perry.
Four stars
CHIP MIX
DJ Kicks: Hot Chip (2007)
The tracklist that Hot Chip chose for the legendary mix CD series DJ-KICKS seems at first glance like a crude mixture of all sorts of inappropriate styles: old-school hip-hop (Positive K) stands next to avant-garde (This Heat), minimal techno (Audion), electro-rock (New Order), soul (Etta James) and Electro (Gramme). The soul lurker “Nitemoves” from Grosvenor, the project of former Hot Chip drummer Rob Smoughton, opens the mix, and the 1953 Ray Charles hit “Mess Around” closes it. In between, Hot Chip tell an exciting story about their different musical preferences.
Five stars
Late Night Tales (2020)
The purpose of mix CD series like LATE NIGHT TALES is – in addition to showcasing one’s own musical knowledge – and above all to bring unknown old and new artists to an open-minded audience. With their selection, Hot Chip focuses, among other things, on the spearhead of the contemporary international avant-garde: Christina Vantzou, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Beatrice Dillon are included with tracks. While Hot Chip’s DJ-KICKS features an exclusive original song, LATE NIGHT TALES comes with four, including the Velvet Underground cover “Candy Says.”
Four and a half stars
SOLO CHIP
Joe Goddard – Harvest Festival (2009)
On his first solo album in 2009, Joe Goddard tells a short history of electronic dance music – from synth-pop to Detroit techno to dubstep, which was still current at the time. The album’s eleven tracks are interspersed with multicolored sounds from Goddard’s arsenal of analog synthesizers, wavering sequencer pads and springy, elastic beats. All this madness comes together in the track “Lemon & Lime”. What there is hardly any here is singing. HARVEST FESTIVAL does not mark Goddard’s break from the band context, on the contrary, the album highlights the electronic side of his main band.
Four stars
Alexis Taylor – Piano (2016)
As far as Hot Chip solo work goes, Alexis Taylor pulls off the furthest stylistic balancing act. He can do a lot between avant-garde, melancholic dance music and indie pop. And he can play the piano. On PIANO there is only the man, his singing and a piano. He interprets the classic “Crying In The Chapel” popularized by Elvis, Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”, two songs from his avant-garde project About Group as well as “So Much Further To Go” by Hot Chip and a few new songs. The fact that it all sounds like a piece is due to the minimal instrumentation and Taylor’s wistful voice.
Four and a half stars