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Leaning heavily on their most recent record—Made in the Dark provided the bulk of the evening’s material save for about four or five songs—Hot Chip wasted little time getting the audience moving on the first date of its two night stand at Chicago’s Metro.
On record, Hot Chip can be a little elusive to pin down, bouncing around from quirky electro to a more serious pop friendly sound. Tracing their development in the studio finds a band perpetually evolving and polishing their sound, but it offers little in the way of clues pointing towards a particular musical direction. The latest album is, of course, no exception. Made in the Dark transitions from a front end filled with electro and—at times almost bombastic—dance music only to give way to a few ballads that close out the album. While this can leave some listeners a little bit confused, the objective at a Hot Chip live show is much more direct and primitive – they are here to entertain.
Hot Chip’s live show is high energy and almost aggressive in its approach. On stage the band’s instrumentation becomes more pronounced and takes a front seat, both figuratively and literally, as it is guitarist Al Doyle standing stage front for most of the set. Tracks like “Over and Over” and “Ready for the Floor” (during the latter some oversized balloons were released from the ceiling) are already a perfect fit to the flow of the evening, while a slower, more melodic track like “And I was a Boy from School” gets an up-tempo makeover that allows it to blend in seamlessly. As with their latest album, the band did put their foot on the brakes, though, rolling out “In the Privacy of Your Love” towards the latter part of the show. And while it didn’t quite fit in with the up-tempo tracks that preceded it, the meditative track added a little depth to this dance-saturated evening.
