The band’s seventh album is compulsively listenable, oddly moving, and stranger than it first appears.
New Hot Chip songs always seem like spaceships: sleek, polished, unsubtle, a little ridiculous. These qualities make it easy to marvel at the work of the London group while also underestimating it. Hot Chip have been around for nearly 20 years now, and though they reached a peak about halfway through (their mid-career albums Made in the Dark and One Life Stand are hard to choose between), they’ve never entirely dropped off. Their last album, 2015’s Why Make Sense, was a grower, complete with one of their best singles to date (“Started Right”). Their new one, A Bath Full of Ecstasy, sounds at first so Hot Chippy as to be a caricature, with big Technicolor beats and big, tenderly sung ballads from lead vocalist Alexis Taylor, but it turns out to be another strong entry. For the most part, it’s compulsively listenable, oddly moving, and stranger than it first appears, as the band gets existential on the dance floor.
Lees de volledige recensie op Pitchfork.com.
