So after a(nother? Depends how you feel about "Careful") false start, Hot Chip's third full-length, Made In The Dark gets cracking at the 1:53 mark of track 2 when "Shake a Fist's" groove stops dead in its tracks and a voice dryly intones, "Before we go any further, I'd like to show you a game I made up called 'Sounds of the Studio'" and we are facialed with vintage Lil Jon synth blasts, like something they'd play on one of those "Music Express" rides at Six Flags (you know, the one where you go forwards and backwards, and the centrifugal force causes the person sitting on the inside of the car - your girlfriend - to crush the person on the outside - you).
Is this record better than The Warning? Well, that depends, I suppose, upon your perception of that album, which - don't look now - was practically on a Thriller or Born in the USA jag when it came to singles, count 'em: "And I Was a Boy From School", "Colours", "Over and Over", "(Just Like We) Breakdown", "The Warning", and "No Fit State". I can say right off the bat that every track from "Ready For the Floor" to "Wrestlers" is single-worthy, and you should probably ready some CD-Rs or playlists or whatever for all of the big name, blue chip remixes this album is gonna spawn.
Made In The Dark is definitely a continuation of the precocious white boy-cum-Prince kitchen sink approach they refined on the previous record after the too-many-jokes-bruv ethos of Coming On Strong. That's a good thing, because upon listening to opener "Out at the Pictures" the first time, my reaction was "Oh no, they're trying to move forward," which, contrary to popular believe, is not always desirable. Don't get me wrong, they do "move forward" as it were: they toured with Junior Boys (So This Is Goodbye = still brilliant) behind The Warning, and that cool-as-the-other-side-of-the-pillow aesthetic has rubbed off a little bit, burnishing the pathos that made tracks like "And I Was a Boy From School" and "Colours" so affecting.
All in all this one's even more of a Trojan horse for post-ironic human feelings, though I suppose that only repeated listens will determine if it "stands the test of time." One thing I can definitely say is that when it comes to electro loverman refinement, if you put this record on a continuum with Von Sudenfed's Tromatic Reflexxions and LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver, it would look like one of those monkey-to-man evolution wall charts.
You can preview Made In The Dark, due February 5th, over at Hot Chip's MySpace page.
