The best Hot Chip album, according to Joe Goddard
Hot Chip, the nation’s favourite food and aural delight, has produced some of the finest albums of the era. With eight albums under their belt since emerging with their debut, Coming on Strong, in 2004, they’ve sounded as fresh as anybody. Yet, nostalgia is part of the mix, too. They have always had one foot in the future and another on a Detroit dance floor in the late 1970s, busting moves.
This has made for a joyous mix, accessible enough to pop onto a family BBQ playlist but resplendent with enough innovation to make great waves within the hipster electronic community. While Joe Goddard might be a co-founder of the revered band, he’s also collaborated widely enough with a vast array of people to distance himself enough from Hot Chip in order to be a fair judge of their work.
When he does so, he picks out In Our Heads from 2012 as his favourite. “It has things like ‘Look At Where We Are’ and ‘Flutes’ on it, which are songs that I’m very proud of,” he told Vice. “When I listen back to ‘Flutes’ now, I feel like it’s a very successful, interesting piece of music, especially the way it starts very small and grows and grows and grows.”
As many festival goers will attest, the track has a culminating feel that proves invigorating enough to ditch your dignity and finally attempt the moonwalk. “It has a propulsiveness which I think is really good,” Goddard adds.
The record marked the band’s first for Domino Records, who reaped the rewards of allowing the band unlimited license. This has often been the tact of the indie label that has brought the world masterpieces like Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, and most recently, lechyd Da by Bill Ryder-Jones. While Goddard asserts that EMI had a similar ethos, the “camaraderie” bolstered the mood as they approached the studio for In Our Heads.
The fresh impetus pushed them towards an eclectic effort that adhered closely to the core tenet of experimentation that the band were founded on. As Goddard adds: “It is important for us to follow our own path and follow what we’re interested in. That’s probably part of the reason we’re still doing it.”
Over a decade after that release, that experimentation still gives the record a point of difference that you don’t see too much elsewhere. ‘Flutes’, for instance, is a simple pop hook at its heart. Alexis Taylor simply sings a catchy topline that dictates the melody, but the background is endlessly textured with an array of sounds that seemed to prognosticate the genre-blending melee we are now seeing more and more of in the increasingly postmodern age. Meanwhile, the build that Goddard speaks of can actually be equated to classical music takes on composition.
The end result is a triumph. But aside from the musicology, one of the main reasons for this is because it flows naturally. This is indicative of a band at the peak of their confidence. As Taylor would cite, “We seemed to be happy with the songs we were writing and they came quickly – and partly due to the fact that we had been enjoying ourselves.”
To coin the oldest clichéd truism in music, their enjoyment becomes ours to share in.
